


Redux

by BleedingTypewriter



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura deserved better, Alternate Canon, Angst, Canon Fix, Canon Fix-It, Explicit Language, Extended Scene, Falling In Love, Happy Ending, Headcanon, Keith-Centric, M/M, Missing Scene, Romance, Scene Additions, Scene fixes, Vignettes, klangst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-01-24 07:33:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18566803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BleedingTypewriter/pseuds/BleedingTypewriter
Summary: Their coming together isn't particularly fast or slow. It takes exactly as long as it needs to, intertwined as it is with a war for the fate of the universe.---A series of Klance scene fixes, extensions, and additions.





	1. s02e08-09

**Author's Note:**

> Scene fix/addition: Season 2, episodes 8-9
> 
> He should have known that the truth would do more harm than good.

Keith is limp against Shiro’s side when they make it back to the castle with Kolivan. He floats in a sort of half awareness, tangentially noting a thousand little details that he can’t quite piece together. His brain becomes a series of jump cuts that don’t quite form a cohesive narrative.

Shiro is holding his knife. It was a sword...earlier, sometime, he thinks...but now it’s a knife again. Seeing it tucked at Shiro’s hip, digging just a little into his own side, makes him uncomfortable, but he can’t remember if it’s because Shiro has it or because of the knife itself.

He’s part Galra. Kolivan had said that. He keeps thinking about that, but he doesn’t know why. His body, aching and cracking all over, should probably take up more of his attention, but he keeps on drifting back to, “...Galra blood runs through your veins.”

Lance doesn’t have to take his hand. He’s not on the ground, he has no need to be helped up. But he’s squeezing Keith’s palm, anyway, and Keith murmurs, “We _are_ a good team,” and tries to laugh, though he only dimly understands why, and Lance doesn’t even crack a smile. He just says his name in this weird, heavy way that makes Keith mutter something like, “Immokay, kay?”

There are a lot of voices in the castle. He can’t tell what they’re saying, or how they’re saying it, but they’re _loud_ about it. They talk over each other in fits and starts. He tries to say something, but it must come out wrong, because they all just look at him funny.

He realizes that he’s never actually been in a healing pod as he’s being shoved into one. From inside, the glass distorts the whole world so he feels like he’s on the other side of a carnival mirror. Still, as his wounds start to itch with preliminary healing, he swears he sees Allura’s face, expression screaming, ‘Please, please, don’t wake up.’

________________

He dreams of war, but when he charges ahead, it’s his fellow paladins’ faces he sees in front of him, their warcries drowned out by the growling of the Galra charging alongside him.

________________

He wakes up cold and nauseous behind carnival glass, wondering if something has gone wrong and the reason he feels like puking so much is that he’s woken up mid-procedure or something. The warped quality of the world around him doesn’t help. When the pod slides open, he flops face-first into a broad chest, gagging a little but managing to keep it down.

“Easy, easy.” He can feel the rumble of Shiro’s voice more than hear it. “I’ve got you.”

Here’s the weird thing about healing pods: beyond the expected disorientation of waking up in an isolated, claustrophobic chamber, there’s no refractory period. As soon as Keith is on solid ground, he can _feel_ his body come back to itself. His thoughts rearrange themselves into the proper order, and he realizes in the span of a single shaky exhale exactly what’s happened.

“Do they know?” He feels like his voice should be rough, but it comes out cold and flat, overly crystalline and rested.

“Keith…” He can tell by the tone of voice—gentle, paternal, and so carefully _un_ condescending that it comes out the exact opposite—that they do.

He’s strong enough to stand—strong enough to do practically anything, and he fucking resents it, because it means he doesn’t have an excuse to _not deal with this right now_ —so he extricates himself from Shiro’s arms. He can see the wariness on the man’s face. He recognizes the worried, pinched wrinkle across his forehead; the tense shoulders belying a readiness to restrain Keith should he lash out. For a long moment they stand there looking at each other, silent.

Finally, Keith realizes they’re both waiting for the same thing: for Keith to go nuclear. It takes them both by surprise when, after a while, he just lowers his eyes and wraps his arms around himself.

“Oh.”

“Keith–”

“It’s fine.”

It’s not fine. But all the same he asks where Kolivan is and they get back to hard facts.

________________

Stepping into the control room is like stepping into the Garrison for the first time all over again. He’s confronted with the stares of people who know too much about him with too little context, and it’s worse because he doesn’t even have any context to offer. He has no _actually_ s or _really_ s. They look at him like he’s a freak, and he has no proof that they’re wrong. They don’t _say_ anything, they just _know_ : he’s an _other_ , an _outlier_ , a _them_ , and he can’t do anything but accept their knowing in silence.

Allura doesn’t look at him at all. She murmurs, “I’m glad you are alright,” while poring over a projected galaxy map, and her smile is small, twitchy at the edges. 

Lance looks worriedly between them, and Keith feels like throwing up again. He wonders how much worse Lance will be, how vicious he’ll revert to being now that his space crush can’t stand the red paladin anymore. Losing the gentle, effervescent energy of Allura’s friendship is bad enough, but losing Lance for the same reason cuts deep on two fronts, neither of which he’s even remotely ready to deal with.

When Allura murmurs her hope that not all Galra are monsters, glancing sidelong at Keith, no one says anything, and that says it all.

________________

He’s thankful for Shiro; immutable Shiro, who’s never given up on him, who stands beside him and vouches for Kolivan and puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Still, he can feel the man pulling in too close, expecting an explosion, edging on oppressively comforting. Even though it makes Hunk warily wring his hands, Keith is glad to be assigned a mission with him over anyone else, even his adoptive brother.

He hesitates when Shiro hugs him goodbye; takes a moment to savour the feeling of being pulled into a genuine embrace as Allura glares from across the hangar and Pidge looks far more worried than she has any reason to look—like she’s sending Hunk on a suicide mission.

He’s almost afraid that Lance is going to make some stupid joke, but he just hugs Hunk and Pidge, and puts a hand on Allura’s shoulder with a look that Keith can’t decipher, blue eyes wide and caring. He meets Keith’s gaze and, just for a second, the red paladin is sure he’s going to approach. He gets the exact look on his face that he does before something like _Don’t die out there, Mullet_ comes pouring out his mouth. But he seems to think better of it, brow furrowing.

Keith gives a half-hearted, general salute to the team and climbs into Yellow to await Hunk. If anyone returns it, he turns away too quickly to see.

________________

The best thing about Hunk is how overt he is. He’s a terrible liar, unable to hide his discomfort or censor his frank, probably inappropriate comments. But Keith doesn’t have to wonder what he’s thinking; doesn’t have to draw on people skills he doesn’t have. Hunk is uncomfortable, sure, but the fact that he expresses it while still flying directly into the belly of the beast (literally) with Keith has the red paladin steadily relaxing. After the mission, Hunk smiles at him and quips, “I think turning Galra has made you a better human!” and though Keith’s _I did not just turn Galra!_ is affronted, he thinks Hunk gets that he doesn’t mean it.

________________

When he gets back to the castle, when they’re safely on the other side of another life-or-death situation, Shiro pulls him into his arms and claps him on the back.

Pidge and Hunk quickly devolve into rapidfire tech chatter, but she touches Keith’s arm before they split off, eyes uncharacteristically soft.

Lance says, “Hey, Mullet,” but it’s careful, no laughter in it, and somehow it hurts the most.

He’s almost scared of what’s going to come out of his own mouth when he opens it, because it’s always been a short road from _hurt_ to _pissed_ with Keith, and he still hasn’t lost it. He still feels a horribly calm, black _nothing_ where all the anger should be. He worries that he’s going to tear Lance a new asshole, and it’ll be mortifying because he’s upset that Lance is _being too nice_ , and how’s he supposed to explain _that_? But what comes out it mouth is a short, soft, “Hey.”

Allura pointedly ignores him. He knows it’s a bad idea before he does it, but he asks her a question anyway, like picking at the edge of a scab to see if it’ll come loose, knowing full well it’ll just bleed and scar. “Have you heard from Coran?”

Her eyes can be so remarkably cold, narrowed and half-averted, sparing him only enough consideration to let him know that the input of a _Galra_ is unnecessary. “Yes,” she answers.

When Lance tries again a moment later, all cheesy finger guns and over-the-top bravado, her smile is _radiant_. Lance’s expression is the same as it always is when he looks at the Altean: he moons overtly, obnoxiously charming, basking in her turquoise-coloured attention. She _beams_ at Lance, and Lance _beams_ back, and the two of them are just so goddamn _bright_ together that Keith can’t look at it. The total absence of light within him—the lack of even a flickering ember readying to hit flashpoint—feels cavernous.

Hunk tries, at least, and Keith wishes he were better at expressing himself, because he appreciates the effort: “You know, Keith was there, too…” he says uncertainly when Allura thanks him for his work in the Weblum.

But when Allura looks straight through Keith, right into the bits of his DNA where the Galra genes are clinging to the human code, and says nothing so loudly that it’s deafening, no one has the guts to talk back.

________________

He heads straight for the training deck; starts off on a level that would be a near-impossible challenge even if he weren’t straight off a mission; gets his ass handed to him three ways from Sunday. “Restart program,” he grunts between panted breaths, heaving himself to his feet every time they’re knocked from underneath him. “Restart program...restart program...restart program...re-”

“ _Jesús_ , stop program!”

The robot ragdolls. In the ensuing silence, without its soft buzzing noises to focus on, Keith can hear his own ragged breath. He stumbles; takes a knee. He goes to wipe the sweat out of his eyes and hisses when the left one aches sharply at the pressure, tender from brow to cheekbone.

" _Mierda_ , what are you doing…?” Lance’s voice is close. When he looks up, he finds the blue paladin approaching; kneeling in front of him. His whole face seems to be drawing toward the middle, muscles pinched with concern. He reaches out and Keith has a blurry flash of a hand in his and _Immokay, kay?_ , but the hand bypasses his own and goes straight for his face, hovering for a second before tracing one finger around what must be a rapidly forming shiner.

And okay. Okay. That’s Lance’s hand, no gloves between them this time, just his warm, slender fingertip against Keith’s bruised skin. “I’m fine,” he says, but he doesn’t make a move to pull away from the touch, even though it hurts a little.

“You know it’s okay to, like, _not be_ , though, right?” Lance asks. His hand falls to Keith’s shoulder. There must be a bruise there, too; the weight has his flesh throbbing, but he doesn’t flinch, afraid it’ll make Lance move. “No one expects you to just bounce back after…”

He doesn’t say it. Keith doesn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

"I think Allura expects me to murder you all in your sleep.”

He’d been going for sarcasm; achieved something in the area of dull, wry acceptance.

“She just needs some time.” Keith huffs softly through his nose. No wonder Hunk and Lance get along so well. “She’ll come around.”

“She shouldn’t have to.”

The gaping, anger-less hole caves in a little more; crumbles at the edges until it feels like it’s all of him: a Keith-shaped, vanta black void, stitched over with skin.

“The Galra destroyed Altea and everyone she loved,” he says evenly, like he’s explaining how two and two make four, “I’m part Galra. I could be _mostly_ Galra, for all I know.” He shrugs. “Why should any of you trust me?”

Lance sputters, fingers tightening on Keith’s shoulder. He resists the urge to wince. “What are you even _talking_ about, man? We’re trusting Kolivan and the Blade of Marmora. Thace saved Shiro’s _life_. There’s...there’s a _difference_ between the Galra and...and…” He flaps his free hand helplessly. “...and the... _Galra_ Galra.”

Keith snorts, but the hole inside him fills in a little, just at the edges, an odd fondness settling in his stomach at the Lance-ism. “You can’t know which one I am,” he protests. “Besides, even you’ve been different since…and it makes sense, because I...what if _I’m_ a _Galra_ Galra? That's a fair question.”

Lance gapes at him. This close up, with his eyes so wide, Keith can see the flecks of darker blue in his eyes and the slight brown imperfection hugging his left iris. “It’s not because you’re _Galra_ ,” he says incredulously. “It’s because you’re not acting like _Keith_.”

Keith blinks at him. 

“You’re practically mute. You’re one step above caveman grunting. It’s like you’re not mad, not sad, not _anything_ , and...and that’s not _you,_ man! You didn’t even tell me not to be an idiot when we set out. And then I find you here, getting your shit wrecked on purpose...I can’t remember the last time I saw you take a serious hit in training, and you look like you got _jumped_ …”

The hand is back at his face, pushing his bangs back. This time, the whole palm settles over his cheek, the slender thumb brushing at his tender cheekbone. “I’m worried about you…” The pink in his cheeks is almost too subtle to see against his dark skin, but Keith spots it as it spreads toward his ears, contrasting beautifully against the hint of white teeth chewing at his bottom lip.

“I...I mean, I…” Keith doesn’t know what to say to that; what to _feel_ to that. The vanta black shrinks, but he realizes that it doesn’t seem to be losing its density. The more it pulls into itself, the heavier it feels, compressing itself until Keith realizes that it hadn’t been empty at all, just impossibly cold, the particles spread thin in suspended animation after the initial explosion. It heats as it contracts, buzzing in his palms.

“Part Galra, part human...it doesn’t matter. I just want you to be all _Keith_.” He smiles a little in an effort to break the tension. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I just wish you’d be a dick to me so I’d know you’re still in there.”

The black contracts; heats; contracts; _heats_.

“Oh god, Keith, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you…”

He only realizes he’s crying as Lance’s other hand comes up to mirror the first, both thumbs swiping meaningfully beneath his eyes, the left smarting something fierce.

“Worry about yourself, Sharpshooter,” he says, and his voice is thick with tears, but fierce with an anger he doesn’t know how to direct. “Don’t be so _stupid_.”

He can only take in Lance’s confused expression for a second before he presses himself forward into the blue paladins arms, wrapping himself around him so hard it _must_ hurt. He doesn’t cry, not beyond the few silent tears already wetting his face, but he shakes hard, face buried in Lance’s shoulder, and feels so _angry_ and _confused_ and _horrified_ that he’s sure he’d have tunnel vision were he to raise his head. The lets the whole, hideous  _fucked-up-ness_ of the situation flood his system from the solar plexus outward, and Lance only stiffens against it for a second before holding Keith close, running his hands over his back in abstract patterns. He says something into Keith’s hair, but the red paladin is pretty sure it’s not even in English. All the same, he finds that he likes the feeling of Lance’s hot breath spreading over his scalp.

When he finally stops shaking, his tears are long dry and his knees are on fire. It should be awkward—and it is, a little—but he finds he’s too exhausted in every way to really pay it any mind. A barked, wry laugh takes him by surprise, especially when he realizes that it's come from his own throat. “Are you going to remember this, this time?” he asks.

Lance chuckles. “Believe me, Keith Kogane, it turns out you’re _unforgettable_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm pretty new to the Voltron fandom, but I can't get over what they did to my boys + Allura at the end. (Seriously, Allura is a BAD BITCH, you can't KILL HER.) Add to that a few pivotal missed opportunities throughout the seasons that had me feeling some type of way and...
> 
> This how I cope.


	2. s03e01-03

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene additions: Season 3, episodes 1-3
> 
> Keith quickly becomes a Lance-a-day smoker.

Losing Shiro for the second time is a special sort of horror that Keith finds he was unprepared for in every way. He keeps moving, keeps searching, keeps looking toward their next move, because every time he slows enough to look around, he remembers that his brother _isn’t there_ , and it makes something warped and ugly stir in him. He doesn’t know how to control it; doesn’t know what it’ll make him do.

It turns out, it makes him have a completely inappropriate outburst in the middle of a diplomatic meeting, “Voltron is _gone_ ,” clinging just inside everyone’s ear as he storms away.

Afterward, standing in front of the black lion, frowning at the way it’s splayed grotesquely on its side like it’s fucking _dead_ , a distantly familiar sensation prods at his palms, like he’s gripping hot matches. He hasn’t had a cigarette since Earth, when Shiro had gone missing the first time and he’d indulged every now and again throughout the lonely year to take the edge off, watching something as hot and destructive as himself drift dismally into the arid desert sky. He hasn’t had a craving for one since he’d found his brother again; had never smoked enough to form a habit.

Lance’s gentle “Hey, man…” as he approaches from behind is like a first draw, scorching his throat and charring his lungs in the best way. It grounds him, comforts him even as it stings.

He talks too much sense. He points out all the things that Keith already knows—that Shiro would want them to move on, that stasis is not an option—and it _hurts_. It hurts shallowly but broadly, working its way under his skin and spreading out until it practically _is_ his skin, pulling too taut and puckering at the seams. But he needs to hear it, he knows; needs to hear it in exactly the way Lance says it, not pulling any punches (because when the hell have they ever done that with each other?), but with just the right amount of compassion.

He feels nicotine sick afterward: satisfied, but nauseous and headachey, swearing to himself that it’s _nothing_ ; that he doesn’t _need_ the comfort, especially at the cost of feeling so unsteady afterward. But wouldn’t it be nice...just _one_ more time…

_________________

He feels raw all over while they talk about finding a new paladin for the black lion. He remembers far too clearly the smell of Shiro’s open wound and the husky, half-delirious request for him to lead Voltron should anything ever happen to him. It hurts so much that even Lance’s insulted insistence that he’s “the cool ninja sharpshooter” is like lighting up, sweetly punching the air from his lungs, putting a fond smile on his face before he realizes it’s there.

“Are you joking?” he asks, laughing, but there’s tenderness in it. Lance is tender, too, though, and Keith still forgets that.

He doesn’t it mean to provoke him, but he can tell immediately that he’s said the wrong thing. The blue paladin squares his shoulders the way he always does when he’s readying for a fight against his red counterpart. “I’m being completely serious when I say that I don’t want _you_ to lead me anywhere,” he says with an accusing finger, and that bites in a way that’s not so good; tastes like stale smoke and gum too weak to cover it up. It feels like a cigarette burning itself out against his fingers on the last, desperate inhale.

“I don’t want to be the leader, that’s just what Shiro wanted!”

And god _fucking_ damn it, he _hates_ that Lance can make him lose control so easily; makes him say what he doesn’t want to say, feel what he doesn’t want to feel. He’s yanked from gentle admiration to prickling fury like there’s a string between his head and Lance’s mouth, and he _hates_ it. He looks down, ashamed of having let anything slip, and even though it’s Lance’s fault in the first place, he still craves a soft _hey, man_ from the blue paladin to make him feel better, and he hates it, _hates_ it, _hates it_.

“What...are you talking about?” Hunk asks.

Keith’s answering, “Nothing,” is unconvincing, even to his own ears.

“Shiro wanted you to be his successor, didn’t he?” Sometimes he hates how perceptive Pidge is. 

“Well, _I_ never heard Shiro say that. And how convenient that you’re bringing it up _now_ , when Shiro is _gone_.” Lance is perfectly accusatory, and Keith realizes that he’d been right: he _is_ a sharpshooter, aiming directly for each and every single one of Keith’s buttons and mashing them all at once.

“You want the job so badly, you can have it!”

It devolves quickly from there. Hunk wants his shot, and so does Pidge, and Keith wishes he could jump on a motorcycle and ride into a desert and let them figure it out amongst themselves because _he doesn’t even want the job_. Coran points out that they have to let the lion decide, and his gut clenches painfully, because he can’t even focus on Allura’s agreement, too distracted by the soft nudge in the place where Red usually lives, but from a lion far too reserved to be his.

_____________

Waiting for his turn in the cockpit, he wonders if he or Lance is hoping harder that _anyone_ but Keith is chosen. He craves _hey, man_ something awful the entire time Lance is sitting in Black.

He knows what’s going to happen as soon as he sits down; he _begs_ Black not to do it. There’s something in the lion’s presence in his mind that even _feels_ like Shiro, vaguely parental and sorry for putting him through this. It makes him want to fly back into the void and search every inch of the galaxy until he finds his brother again.

Just like Shiro had done when Keith was just a troubled group home kid, Black doesn’t take Keith’s no for an answer. It lights up as Keith sinks into a thick darkness inside himself.

He fully expects an outburst from Lance when Black sets him back on the ground, but the blue paladin is strangely silent; scrutinizing. Allura speaks first, congratulating him as best she can under the circumstances. Pidge and Hunk follow suit, but…

“No. I don’t accept this.”

“You _must_.” Allura is emphatic. “The black lion has chosen you.”

How do they not _get it_?

“I can’t replace Shiro. You guys were right, I’m the loner! I’m not the leader Shiro thought I was.” Black is disapproving in the back of his head. He wants to tell her to shut up, that this is _her fault_ , but he knows she’s only doing what her true paladin would want.

A hand on his shoulder.

It feels like smoke in his lungs, abrasive and soothing.

“Keith, no one can replace Shiro, but the black lion wouldn’t choose anybody it didn’t feel was worthy to lead Voltron.” Keith doesn’t understand how he does it. Emotions are so _hard_ for the (former?) red paladin, but Lance seems able to ping pong from anger to offence to acceptance to comfort with none of the residue that always clumps Keith’s feelings together. They don’t meld, but instead come in rapid succession, their early bitterness not leaching at all into his current reassuring tone. “I respect its choice, and you should, too.” 

It’s too much. Keith turns away, ostensibly to look at Black. Lance’s smokey quality is really starting to get to him.

For a second there, he’d been tempted to put his lips on the man like he really was a cigarette. “Who’s going to fly the red lion?” he asks, instead, and thinks for the second time in mere minutes, ‘ _Please, no_ …’

____________

He feels _some kind of fucking way_ about Lance piloting Red, but he can’t do anything about it in the middle of a battle. He grinds out a, “Careful with Red!” as he watches the (former?) blue paladin scrape up his girl, but other than that he can’t really concentrate on his _feelings_ about the situation until he can ensure the team’s survival.

(He also feels some kind of fucking way about Allura flying Blue, but it’s formless enough that he can ignore it; angle it inside himself so the ugly bits are hidden and he can pretend he’s just _shocked_ , is all, and not wondering if she can feel shadows of Lance in Blue the way he can feel shadows of Shiro in Black.)

They form Voltron; drive away the threat. He’s almost sad to see the Galra ships go. They give him something to rage against. Black is slower than Red, and less reactive to his impulses. In Red, it had been easy to let loose more, to weave in and out of enemy formations, his and his lion’s fury melding together until their combined white-hot uncontrollability could be channeled into a series of cathartic explosions. Black is more careful—powerful, but requiring a deeper sense of discipline and calm. By the end of the battle, Keith still feels wired and tense, unused to lingering emotions usually obliterated by a good fight.

The first thing he does is go say goodbye to Red. He doesn’t say anything at first, just presses his forehead against the cool metal of her front paw for a second. He can still feel her in his mind, weakly. He tries to send her his gratitude and his sadness at their parting, and he thinks she gets it, but it’s weird not to feel her hum to life against him. He sends his condolences for her poor choice in new paladin, but all he feels in return is a vague sense of amusement.

He looks at her side, where she’s scraped up a little from Lance’s inexperience. “I’m sorry he did that to you,” he murmurs. “You’re just a little too much heat for him right now. But if anyone can learn to handle too much, it’ll be Lance…”

The amusement doesn’t dissipate. Keith clears his throat.

Walking away from her is harder than he’d thought it would be. It’s not like he’ll never see her again...but the black lion feels like he has it on loan, and he feels oddly disconnected without Red there to ground him.

_Lonely._

If there’s one thing he’s not used to being bothered by, it’s feeling lonely. He blames the lack of outlet in the battle, the stress of being responsible for more than his own life which, mostly out of necessity, he’s never really put much stock into. He’s always been able to hurt himself—take the hit, get kicked out of the class, be the one left behind—because he can take it, and how much would it matter to the world, really, if something happened to him? Now he’s got a team to think about; a war, a _universe_ , to consider.

He’s been leading Voltron for all of four hours, and he’s already exhausted.

____________

Having done it himself, he should have expected Lance and Allura to be in the hangar, saying goodbye to their old lions and bonding with the new ones. Still, it takes him by surprise when he spots them, Lance staring sadly up at Blue, saying goodbye. He can’t hear them, can only watch as Allura says something that puts a hopeful expression back on Lance’s face. He gives her his bayard, and it’s... _touching_ . Keith has to admit, they look _nice_ together. They have a certain complimentary lightness about them.

He feels intensely the weight of the Black lion in his head.

Lance says something that puts that particular sparkly smile on Allura’s face, and it might as well be, “My darling, my love, you’re the light of my life,” for all they look like a perfect couple, and Keith doesn’t know why that has him _seething_. More likely, Lance is bequeathing Blue to Allura, saying all the things Keith wishes he could express to Lance—sweet things about entrusting him with something precious; about what it means about how close they must be, in the end—but that doesn’t make him feel better.

He decides it must be because they’re fighting a _war_ , here. One that he’s now responsible for winning. They don’t have time for making googly eyes at each other.

They don’t, he reminds himself firmly, have time for stupid unrequited _nothings_ that _aren’t going to happen_.

_Please, no..._

He’d thought the tracker on Lotor’s ship could wait, but he’s in Black and readying for take off by the time he decides that they’ll go after him _now_. “You wanted me to lead Voltron?” he spits when they question him about it, voices crackling through his comms so he almost mistakes them for his own staticky thoughts. “This is how I lead.”

__________

He thinks he’s fucked up almost as soon as the battle starts, but he doesn’t think it hard enough. He goes into it knowing his team isn’t fully on board, which means he’ll have to deal with sloppiness and hesitance, but it doesn’t help that Black keeps growling at him, clearly not happy with the way he’s doing things.

 _I_ **_asked_ ** _you not to choose me, but you wanted this,_ he thinks savagely back at her. _Maybe you should have thought twice if you can’t handle me as your paladin._

She’s downright sullen after that, but that just pisses him off more. No one else gets that they have to _push_ , they have to be _better_ , they have to _adapt_ , and they have to do it fucking _fast_. Black is sluggish against his commands, Red is bouncing around like a rubber ball, and he’s taking just about as many hits from Blue as he is from Lotor. Why can’t they just shut up and _get their shit together_?

He hardly even registers the commands he’s giving or the way he’s giving them. Lance’s voice is an unfiltered roll-up, like straight hot tar pooling in his clavicle, coating his throat so the burning sticks and intensifies long after the hit is gone. The worst part (though he’ll deny that later; insist to no one that it hadn’t bothered him at all, because _why would it_ ?) is that Lance just gets more vicious the more _Allura_ is hurt.

Things go from bad to worse to supremely fucked, and by the end he’s full of so much smoke he thinks he might pass out.

_____________

When the team is splintered and he’s slumped in the silence of his own screw-up, he finally breathes it all out. “This is all my fault,” snakes out of his lips and disperses itself among the rest of the disappointment in Black’s cockpit. He might have just lost them an entire war, but all he can think about is the way his team is going to die screaming because of _him_.

“...yeah, it kind of is. But,” Lance pauses, and his voice takes on that pure, single-minded determination that Keith is amazed he seems to be able to conjure between heartbeats, “now, we have to fix it.”

This time his smoke tastes like a cigar—a Cuban, he thinks, and actually wants to laugh. It’s rich and smooth and enveloping him in a smell that has no right to be as comforting as it is. It’s heavy on the tongue, almost too heavy in the lungs, but all-encompassing and leaving no room for bullshit.  _We_ have to fix it, Lance had said, even though it's _Keith's_ fuck-up, and  _shit_ , Keith hadn't known there could be a better hit than  _hey, man._

____________

He’s never been one for rah-rah speeches, but his first seems to go over well. He has to admit, the “who’s with me?!” at the end is overly dramatic, but he’s doing his best to say what he thinks they need to hear. Anyway, it sounds like something Lance might say after _hey, man_ , so he goes with it. 

They form Voltron and make it out safe, and it’s not until Pidge asks if they should pursue Lotor that he even remembers to think about anything but the wellbeing of his team. Isn’t _that_ a trip.

“No, pushing the team too hard is what got us in the mess in the first place. We’ll face him again when we’re ready.” It sounds like something Shiro would say. There’s a rumble in his head from Black as if to say she’s proud of him, so it must be the right call.

“Roger that,” Lance says, and then adds with a certain warmth in his voice, “Team leader.”

He remembers one of his foster fathers leaning against a half-rotted railing, lighting up the second half of a smoke he’d saved from his last break at work, stinking to high heaven as he sighed, “These damn things are going to kill me one day,” and finished it in three draws. _Please, no,_ Keith thinks in that exact same _these-things’ll-kill-me_ tone, and resigns himself to the addiction.


	3. s03e06

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene fixes and additions: Season 3, episode 6
> 
> Close, but no cigar.

It turns out Allura can fight, and Lances likes it.

So that’s another thing for Keith to deal with.

Cool.

He revels in the playfully offended, “Hey, Keith! I had that guy!” he garners from Lance as he charges into the battle, driving his sword home and flipping backward to avoid the other sentinels closing in. He can almost feel the sharpshooter's scope on him, hear the way he’s watching him in the nearly inaudible breaths hissing through the comms.

And he _loves_ this. He loves the taste of danger behind his clenched teeth, the frantic flutter in his gut with every blocked death blow, the fact that Lance is watching him do what he’s best at. He’s not a smooth talker, not a great listener, nothing special in so many ways (like so many people have told him over the years), but he can do this. He can fight tooth and nail and _win_ , and he _fucking loves_ that Lance can see it.

Loves that Lance has his back.

Loves the still foreign feeling of not straining to watch his own six because his Sharpshooter _had that guy_.

A group of sentinels rushes the tunnel at Hunk, but Lance thinks fast and shoots out the door control, because _he’s got them_ , and Keith stabs the next robot almost gleefully, revelling in the fact that he leaves his flank open just because he _can_.

He takes out another sentinel and pauses to take stock. He looks for Allura first, knowing she’s the newest to live combat, and—

Oh.

She can fight tooth and nail and _win_ , too.

Cool. 

But she’s also a smooth talker, and a great listener, and something special in every way. 

God, she even looks more stylish doing what Keith is best at, deflecting shots with her glowing whip and skillfully playing the sentinels against each other, flinging them around like marionettes. And it fucking _sucks_ , because even through the stab of ( _unwarranted_ , Keith thinks resolutely; _totally unwarranted and not to be expressed_ ) jealousy, the new black paladin is impressed. And if he’s impressed, he _knows_ the rest of the team will be, and…

“That was awesome!” Lance is a little breathless at Allura’s display. Surprised, as if he can’t quite believe that she’s attractive is yet _another_ way.

Something familiar and unseemly stirs in Keith’s chest. He wants to hate Allura, wants to spit that she’d been _okay_ , he _supposes_ , but that they’d have to step up training if she wants to fight _real_ Galra soldiers. But he can’t. Not only does he know it’s not true—if anything, he’s thinking about ways to integrate Allura’s nimble style into their training regimen—he remembers all too well what it had felt like to have a team member hate him for something he couldn’t control. Allura had been big enough to acknowledge and apologize for her behaviour. The last thing Keith wants to do is put their friendship in another awkward spot for another awkward reason.

Lance talks about her like she’s _everything_ , and Keith has no one to bristle at but himself, because she _is_ everything, and he’s so obviously, incredibly _not_.

She’s _awesome_.

He’s...well, nothing, really, except something that had gotten in the way of something Lance was already focused on having. He’d _had_ that guy, after all.

He knows that sentinels can’t feel pain, that stabbing them to deactivate them is far more effective than slashing at the surface parts that are less likely to be fatal. All the same, he slashes at the next few metallic “throats,” watching sparks fly in place of blood.

When it’s over, he tells Pidge she’s done a good job and declares the base secure, and goes on about contacting the Blade of Marmora and what their next move will be, because all those messy little words are easier than the _'What did you think of_ **_me_ ** _out there, Sharpshooter?'_ he wants so badly to ask.

____________

Having Shiro back is...a lot.

He wants it to be a relief when his brother steps onto the bridge with his hair cut, dressed in clean clothes with a little of the life back in his features. But something is wrong—just  _off_ —about him, and it had been easier to dismiss when he was scruffy and long-haired, looking nothing like his usual military-neat self. It’s tougher to reconcile the fact that his brother has changed in some unspecified, unclear way when he’s looking at all of them with that warm, familiar, paternal expression.

And of course there’s Allura, who Keith is pretty sure is starting to suspect something is wrong with him, because he’s been exceedingly nice to her since they got back from their latest mission. He can’t help it: every time he finds himself thinking something horrible about her, just because she has the audacity to exist in the same vicinity as himself and Lance, he finds himself smiling at her, or encouraging her, or asking her opinion, because it makes him feel a little less guilty about his traitorous thoughts. He slips in between her and Lance while they huddle around Pidge, planning, and he actually _grins_ at her, he’s so mad at himself.

He’s a little out of sorts by the time he finds himself in his room, answering a knock at the door he just kind of assumes is going to be Shiro.

“Hey, man,” greets him instead, and _fuck_ , Keith really has it bad, doesn’t he? Lance lets himself in and the door swishes shut behind him, and Keith doesn’t even glare half-heartedly at him. He knows him too well, now. He can see the tension in his face; can see in a thousand little variances that whatever it is, it’s serious, and this is no time for any kind of rivalry, mock or not. “I wanted to talk to you because, well...because I’ve been worrying about something.” 

Keith blinks. “Must _really_ be bothering you if you’re coming to talk to me,” he says, because it’s true. Hunk’s known him longer—is arguably his best friend. Pidge is the most logical, and Shiro the most dad-like (though Keith can’t blame him for not wanting to go to him at the moment). And there’s Allura; open, calming, gentle Allura, who Keith is the most surprised Lance hasn’t gone to. _Chicks love a sensitive guy, you know_ , he’d bragged once. But here he is, biting his lip at Keith, of all people, like the black paladin is the one who can help him most.

“Well, I mean, you’re the leader now, right?”

Ah. 

Right.

 _Cool_.

“I guess…” he answers, and knows he sounds disappointed, but Lance doesn’t seem to notice.

“I’ve been doing some math, and with Shiro back, that makes six paladins. But there are only five lions and, if I’m right, that’s one paladin too many.”

Lance actually holds up his fingers as he talks, brow furrowed, until only his pinky is left standing. It’s...cute. _Shit._ “Solid math…” Keith deadpans (because it’s fucking _cute_ , and he wants to kiss the tip of that pinky).

“Look, when Shiro takes over the black lion, you’re going to want your red lion back,” Lance says, which isn’t _necessarily_ true, but Keith lets him talk. “If I get a lion, that means I’d have to take Blue from Allura, and she’s progressed a lot faster than any of us did. She might even be able to unlock powers we don’t know of.”

“That’s true.” God, Keith is bad at this. But it _is_ true, and he can’t see the point in lying. It _is_ best for the team that Allura stays with Blue. They’re a stellar team, and it’s more than likely they’re going to unlock more than one hidden power together. It’s a train of thought he’s had himself, but he doesn’t like where Lance is going with it; doesn’t like the increasing hint of unsurety he can hear in the red paladin’s usually over-confident voice.

“So, maybe the best thing I can do for the team is step aside.”

Keith feels like he’s swallowed an ice cube. What fresh hell…?

“What are you talking about?” He doesn’t even have the grace to sound concerned, just flabbergasted, because how would losing Lance help _anything_? Losing Lance would be…

It’d be...

“This isn’t a participation game. This is war, and you want your best soldiers on the front lines.” 

Keith wants to sputter like Lance, because Lance is sounding all too much like _him_. He has a staggering number of opinions about what Lance has said, and they all come flooding into his head at once, so he can’t do anything for a second but stare, open-mouthed.

What does Lance think he is if not one of their best soldiers? He’s a paladin of Voltron—the team’s Sharpshooter and infallible support. He’d awakened the first lion; caused the gentle thrum that Keith had felt for the better part of a year to explode into a thick, all-encompassing energy with just a touch. 

He’s the biggest pain in the ass Keith has ever met, and he’s fucking _irreplaceable._

Keith wants to tell Lance, but it’s too much; threatens to come out as something far too harsh or else far too aloof. But he needs Lance to know; _needs_ him to get that the thing that pisses Keith off the most about his cartoonish overconfidence is that it’s _valid_ : Lance really _is_ the cool, ninja sharpshooter (at least, he is to Keith, even if he’s every bit the goofball, too).

So he reaches out and pulls Lance against his chest.

It’s a little ridiculous. Keith is a bit shorter than Lance, so he ends up mashing his own face against the man’s shoulder. And Lance isn’t expecting it, so he ends up smushed against the black paladin with his arms against his sides, his soft, surprised, “Oof,” puffing over Keith’s left ear.

Keith doesn’t hold it— _can’t_ hold it, unbearably awkward as he quickly realizes it is—but instead releases Lance a moment later. Just like Lance had done for him, he lays his palm against one cheek and lets his thumb skate back and forth, and tries not to focus on how nice it feels (all those skin treatments are worth it, goddammit, not that he’ll ever tell Lance that). Lance just looks at him with wide blue eyes, eyebrows still trying their best to touch.

Keith isn’t sure Lace realizes that he’s pressing into the hand on his cheek, like he’s seeking more contact: fucking sharpshooter, landing bull’s eyes in all of Keith’s soft spots without even fucking _looking_.  

“Stop worrying about who flies what and just focus on your missions,” Keith says softly. “Things will work themselves out.” 

It’s not a good answer. He knows that. But it’s the only one he has—the only solution he’s found when he, himself, has wondered if he’ll be a part of Voltron come next week.

It says nothing of Lance, though, and how much Keith knows they can’t do without him, and he wishes he could pry his own jaw open and claw the right words out of his throat.

But he can’t.

“Okay.” Lance’s voice is less dejected than when he’d walked in, but still pretty goddamned dejected. “Thanks.” He nuzzles almost imperceptibly into Keith’s palm once more before pulling away, turning toward the door.

“And Lance?”

When the red paladin turns around, Keith realizes he has no idea what he wants to say, just knows he wants to smudge that drawn look from Lance’s face.

“Leave the math to Pidge.”

He smiles, at least, and Keith smiles back, and hopes there’s at least a little of the admiration he feels in it. After Lance is gone, the gentle hiss of the door the only evidence he’d been there at all, Keith whispers to the empty room, “We can't lose you... _I_ can't...”

His palm doesn’t stop tingling for a long time, right where Lance had pressed his insecure warmth against it.

_____________

He’d been a bit hasty, earlier, thinking that scrapping for his life was his only talent. He’s also really, _really_ good at being the odd man out.

He volunteers to stay behind as soon as he and Shiro go to give orders at the same time, because he’d only been keeping his brother’s spot warm for him, and who the hell would listen to _him_ with a far more experienced, proven leader right there?

He volunteers to join the team in Black when Shiro can’t pilot her, even though neither of them really knows what that means, and backs down when Shiro’s voice contradicts his in their helmets.

He really thinks it’s a better idea to go for Lotor, for the _source_ of all their woes, rather than Shiro’s plan to focus on the meteor ship, so he offers to go on alone. After all, they could complete two missions at once and risk only one paladin’s life—an _excess_ paladin’s life, at that. When Shiro insists they stick together (okay, okay—it’s really when Lance looks at him worriedly and says that he agrees with Shiro), Keith can hear a little of his old, pre-black lion self in the way he barks, “Fine, let’s just _move_!”

He can hear even more of his old self in his own bitter thoughts, unbidden and, he knows, undue: _‘You wanted me to lead, but I guess I’m pretty fucking shitty at it, after all, huh?’_ He’d thought maybe his instincts were changing, becoming more reliable, more like the leader Shiro had thought he could be. He doubts it more and more the longer the mission goes on.

He’s sullen as they move through the tunnels, Allura at their head (which is just...salt, meet wound). He’s almost glad when they open the door to a wall of Galra—almost. They’re a little too talented, a little too quick, but he relishes in the excuse to _run_ , bayard at the ready, brain screaming _danger, danger, get your head in the fucking game_ instead of all manner of terrible truths about how silly he’d been to think, even for a second, that he’d been _actually worthy_ of leading Voltron. 

And then his thrust is stopped, gnashed against the metal of a Galran gun, and he’s looking into sharp feminine eyes that he _knows_ he’s seen before, and _well, fuck_ , he really is shit at this, isn’t he? That’s definitely the Galra from the Weblum, the one who’d _already_ stolen from them after he’d saved her life. What the hell does Lance have to worry about? He’s not the paladin who rescued a fucking _Galran general_ , only for said general to not only come back and shit kick them, but also use their stolen goods to _construct a goddamn_ _Teludav_.

 _Maybe the best thing I can do for the team is step aside_.

Maybe Lance’d had a point. He’d just been thinking about the wrong paladin.

Now he’s distracted _and_ pissed off, and the combination is enough to have him stumbling, putting up a late guard against a shot he knows is going to get through. He braces for impact; gets a sharp flash before his eyes, instead, and Lance’s voice in his helmet: “I gotcha, buddy!”

Keith wants to fucking cry.

He wants to hold Lance’s face in his hands, or have Lance hold his face in his hands, _whatever_. He just wants more _hey, man_ and _we gotta fix it_ and _I gotcha_ , because now he knows that everyone save Shiro has been right his whole life—he _is_ just a selfish loner with an authority problem; a disciplinary case with an inferiority complex. But Lance says, “I gotcha, buddy!” like he’s not those things at all, and he smiles at him, because just for a second, Keith believes it.

Just for a second, though.

Then it’s back to the fight, and _damn_ the Galra who’s dressed like a bad Batman villain is fucking _nimble_. Keith has to pull a few tricks of his own just to get out of her chokehold before he passes out, back aching from where she’d managed to _flip him over her shoulder_ (and he’s _supposed_ to be good at this; maybe he’s as good a fighter as he is a leader, in the end). Looking around, he realizes the paladins are holding their own, _barely_ , but as Lance gets knocked off his feet by the Galra Keith saved, he knows they have to retreat.

Knows they might not have to, if he hadn’t saved the life of one of the people trying to kill them.

Allura hauls Lance to his feet to get him running, and…

 _Stop worrying about who flies what (_ ** _about who helps who_** _) and focus on your missions. Things will work themselves out._  

He’d had a point. He’d just been thinking about the wrong paladin.

He doesn’t know what’s going on; is pulled in ten different directions as he tries to relearn how to give his opinion as just that: an opinion, rather than an order. He feels less and less like a leader by the second; wonders if black will even react to him by the time they make it back to the lions. “This is why we have to defeat Lotor here and now,” he insists, because they can’t keep letting the guy tie a string to their tail and watch them chase it, but he can’t just order them to do things his way. Not with Shiro’s dissent in their ears. He can’t believe it, but he’d give anything to be the leader again if it’d mean he could step out of this pseudo-, kinda-, not-really-but-sorta position.

By the time they make it back and form Voltron, Keith is all fiery, hot-headed, take-the-fucking-shot, like he hasn’t been since before Shiro disappeared. They go after the meteor ship with aggression to spare, but it does no good. He lets out a frustrated growl from the cockpit as it evades them. “It’s too quick!” he yells.

“Guys, the cargo ship is escaping with the Teludav inside of it!”

There it is: that unfamiliar sharpness that doesn’t feel like the Shiro Keith knows. It concerns Keith, but nothing he’s feeling is translating itself particularly well. “I thought taking down the ship made from the comet was the most important thing!” It’s petty and childish; satisfyingly so. He knows it doesn’t matter who was _right_ ; circumstances change, and you can’t make new decisions if you’re still thinking about the old ones. But he’d _said_ from the beginning that taking down Lotor would be more worth it, and _now look_. **_See?_ **

It hasn’t even been that long since he’s been in the position of team member instead of team leader, but it’s weird being disgusted with his own behaviour, the part of him that had taken to being in control wrestling with the status quo he’s naturally falling back into. He feels almost pre-Voltron altogether; like the petulant, specifically stand-off-ish dropout he’d been the first time he’d lost Shiro.

“We still can’t let Lotor get away with the Teludav!” Shiro argues.

Allura’s voice now, ever one of reason: “Shiro’s right! We need to destroy it!”

Keith knows he’s yelling. They’re asking him to do what he wanted to do in the first place, and he doesn’t even know anymore if he’s insisting on the opposite because he thinks it’s a better idea or because _fuck them,_ _maybe Shiro isn’t always right_. “But the comet is right here, we need to take it down!”

“Keith, the cargo ship is getting away!”

It’s too much. Too much, too much, too much. He’s in control of Voltron without being in control of himself, and it’s _terrifying._

They get stuck between heavy fire and a retreating cargo ship; between a rock and a hard place. “Keith, what should we do?” Lance asks, voice panic-edged, and it makes Keith’s jaw clench, because he wants _I gotcha_ so bad right now, not another question he has no satisfactory answer to.

“You’re going to have to lower your shield, shoot the cargo ship, and deal with the consequences.”

 _Have to_.

He’s going to _have to_ lower their shields and shoot the ship.

He _had to_ lead the team in Shiro’s absence.

He _has to_ step aside now that the real black paladin is back; _has to_ act as a poor substitute in Black until they can figure out how to get Shiro in the driver’s seat again.

He’s always fucking _hated_ “has to”s.

“We can beat this ship first, and then get the cargo ship,” he argues.

“There’s not enough time! You need to make a decision!”

It’s _not Shiro_. But he doesn’t have time to focus on that. _What would Shiro do if he were here..._ **_really_ ** _here?_

Patience yields focus.

He barks the command to lower the shield and ready Hunk’s bayard while he’s still thinking over the finer details of his plan. They’re forced to put Lotor’s meteor ship directly in their six to take aim, so Keith breathes deep, thinks _hey, man_ and _I gotcha_ and _we gotta fix it_ , and feints with enough time that the shot meant for them destroys the Galran Teludav, a direct hit.

He can’t pull it off twice. His mind is already busying again, buzzing black at the sides, so they take not an insignificant amount of damage on the second shot. But the Teludav is no more. The decision has been made. 

Lotor escapes, but at least for the moment, the only remaining chaos is in Keith’s head.

_____________

Shiro tries.

He says all the right things, but it only makes it worse, because they’re all the wrong things for Keith. He tells him that he has to pick his battles, that he’ll get there, that the black lion _chose him_. It does nothing but remind the new black paladin that he’d better _buck up, buttercup,_ because he’s still got a team to lead (kinda, sorta, in a way), no matter how he feels about it.

He’ll make a great leader some day: it’s what Shiro wants him to believe. The only problem is that it means he has no fucking idea what he’s supposed to be right now. And what if the person he is now has no interest in “getting there”? What does being _chosen_ have to do with how he feels about the gig? 

Hunk tries.

He holds out a bowl of something lumpy and brown that smells _exactly_ like a hot fudge sundae, and says, “I think you did great out there, just so you know,” around the spoon stuck in his mouth. Keith stares for a long moment, before taking a bite of the...whatever it is. It doesn’t make the situation any better, doesn’t offer any answers, but as they eat in somewhat awkward silence and Keith becomes more and more sure that, yes, this must be Hunk’s way of offering support, he finds it helps in its own special way. (It _especially_ helps that _oh my god_ the substance in the bowl might look like someone already ate it, but it tastes _exactly_ like a DQ sundae with nuts, and he hadn’t even realized he liked those so much until he’s done the first bowl in record time.)

It leaves him feeling much the way he already is, though: overstuffed on something he knows so many people want, but that he’s not sure he’s cut out to have.

Pidge tries.

She takes the time to explain in layman's terms what she’s working on, and even has him taking apart a piece of Altean tech he’s not entirely sure isn’t just a make-work project. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says, surrounded by the detritus of his attempt at rebuilding the whatever-it-is.

Pidge just shrugs. “I trust you,” she says, turning back to her laptop. It’s meant to be comforting, he knows, and it is in a way, but it also underscores the fact that he knows her trust is unfounded.

Allura tries.

She’s more direct than the others, asking in that perpetually gentle voice of hers, “May I have a word?” And she’s sweet. She’s so, so sweet, saying all sorts of things about how far he’s come, about how much the team needs him, about how no one expects this to be a well-choreographed dance and he and Shiro will find a way to balance the leadership of Voltron.

He appreciates it. This time, it’s him who pulls her in for a hug, because he doesn’t know how to be sweet in return, but he knows she understands _this_.

The thing is, her words are sweet, but the situation is anything but, and Keith has a penchant for overthinking advice (perhaps the reason that Shiro’s simple, impossible to misinterpret “patience yields focus” has stuck with him so long). By the time Keith has made it back to his room, the powdered sugar that Allura had seemed to be able to sprinkle over the situation has blown away.

Lance tries.

It almost works.

Because they almost…

He’s standing on the bridge, late at what the castle ship approximates as night. The lights are low, anyway, so the expanse of nothing on all sides seems especially stark, dotted only sparsely with stars this far toward the edge of the galaxy they’re in. He twirls his blade idly between his fingers, flipping now and then between his right and left hand.

This, at least, still feels familiar; reactive to his touch in a way he no longer believes Black will ever be.

“Hey, Keith...”

 _Keith_. He’s not used to his name in that hesitant, caring tone. _I gotcha_ and _hey, man_ and _fix it_ , sure, but _Keith_ is a whole new sensation, and he wonders how many times Lance will manage to make the black paladin’s palms itch with _please, no_. He stands beside Keith, looking out at the emptiness with him, close enough that the fabric of his ridiculous lion robe makes a soft _shht-shht_ noise against Keith’s jacket every time one of them shifts.

“Hey.” He stops flipping his knife and lets it roll easily between the fingers of his right hand instead. He doesn’t turn to look at Lance, so he finds he can’t quite gauge whether the ensuing silence is meant to be uncomfortable or not. The red paladin certainly seems to be shifting quite a bit, _shht-shht_ the only noise aside from the barely there tap-swish of the knife in Keith’s fingers. He doesn’t pry, though; lets Lance fidget as much as he needs to. His own thoughts are low and sprawling; an inarticulable grey knot his fingers have gone numb trying to unravel. He gives Lance all the time he needs to unravel his—or not. He’s not opposed to standing here in silence with him, either. He likes the warm presence of him as he looks out into the cold void. It reminds him that there are still good reasons to be here.

“You’re good at that.”

Keith glances at his right hand. He’d almost forgotten about the knife sliding easily through his fingers. He shrugs. “Practice,” he says simply.

Lance laughs softly. “You know, it’s okay to admit you’re just _good_ at stuff.”

Keith catches the knife by the hilt. He looks at Lance, surprised. The red paladin is looking at him almost fondly. “Huh?”

“All you ever talk about is what you’re not good at. ‘I’m not good with people. I’m the loner. I’m not a leader.’” Lance’s voice rises to an unflattering whine in imitation, but his smile is on the easy side of teasing, so Keith just nudges playfully at his shoulder ( _shht-shht_ ) with a little ‘ _hey!_ ’ and lets him go on. “But you’re really good at a lot of stuff, and it’s like you don’t even _see_ it.”

Keith clears his throat. He looks back down at his knife and starts twirling it through his fingers again, unable to keep looking at that handsome face and those blue eyes, looking at him like…

Like...

“It really is just practice, though,” he says. “Anyone could do it. You could do it, if you put enough time in.”

“But I didn’t put the time in. I wouldn’t be able to, it’d drive me nuts sitting in one place and practicing the same thing over and over again. You had the _dedication_ , dude. It’s okay to own that.” 

Keith shrugs. “It wasn’t dedication so much as boredom. I had a lot of time to myself while I was looking for Shiro.”

“ _Patience_ , then,” Lance insists.

“I mean, I guess…”

The knife clatters to the floor as Lance grabs him by the shoulder, spinning him so they’re face-to-face. “Watch it!” Keith chides, but Lance doesn’t seem to care. He frames Keith’s face with his hands, palms against his cheeks so he can’t turn away. Lit only by a few faraway stars and a low illumination the ship uses to resemble moonlight, Keith notices how _striking_ Lance is, with his bright, honest eyes framed by all that dark skin.

“ _Listen_ to me, Keith.”

Keith is listening. He notices that when Lance talks like this, trying to make a serious point, he gets just the barest edge of an accent. His voice takes on a certain rolling quality that it’s incredibly difficult not to find endearing now that Keith’s noticed it.

“You’re patient, and dedicated, and smart.”

Keith’s cheeks heat against the warmth of Lance’s hands. He tries to pull away; feels a little stupid with his own hands hanging useless at his side. “I–”

“ _Shut up_.” Lance’s fingers tighten, and he jerks Keith’s face closer. 

Keith shuts up.

“You’d do _anything_ for the people you care about. You’d have fought the entire Galra empire by yourself to get Shiro back. You’re selfless to the point of being _reckless_ , _constantly_ putting yourself in danger because you don’t want anyone else to have to do it. You’re amazing when you fight, flipping around like a goddamn _cat_ , and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but for someone who insists they’re so _bad_ at leading Voltron, we haven’t lost a single fight since you started doing it. When you baited the comet ship to hit the Teludav, that was _smart_ , Keith. Because _you’re_ smart. You think fast and you adapt and…”

He seems to run out of steam somewhat, looking desperately back and forth between Keith’s eyes. Keith is almost glad; when he talks, his breath puffs over Keith’s lips, and paired with the words sinking in between the grey fibres of his thoughts, and his own personal nicotine in human form so close to his lips, he’s tempted to do something stupid like lean forward for a proper taste.

“It drives me _crazy_ sometimes that you can’t see that you’re...you’re...”

Lance’s voice is softer, but Keith can feel the syllables of his stances skating over his lips. There’s that little brown imperfection, again, clinging to the blue iris that’s getting closer...closer…

Keith feels dumb and out of place. His arms are still at his sides and he doesn’t know what to do with them. Telltale warmth prickles at his cheeks and ears. His heart is a rapid staccato behind his sternum. He doesn’t know whether he wants Lance to stop talking or not. The urge to resist sits persistently in his stomach, _I’m not, I’m not_ roiling like heartburn, and yet there’s a certain acceptance that has a little of his earlier anxiety clearing.

Lance thinks he’s all these things, and given the way he feels about Lance (that nameless, shapeless thing he can’t define, but that makes him feel weak and strong at the same time), he _believes_ him.

For the first time in far too long, he feels like enough.

Lance’s face is too close for him to properly make out his expression. He can only take it in a bit at a time; the eyebrows, tight with concern; the extra fine baby hairs wisping at his ears; the lips, a little open, a little tense, getting closer... _closer_ … 

The hiss of the door is brash in the quiet of the room. The sharp _sss_ undercuts how quiet the minutiae of their noises had been, even though their breathing and their _shht-shht_ and their _closer...closer…_ had seemed so _loud_ just moments before. 

Keith jolts back, and Lance’s hands are too slack to stop him this time. The red paladin reacts slower, fingers hovering for another moment before he drops them, eyes sticking to Keith’s like it’s difficult for him when he finally looks away to see who’s entered the bridge. The black paladin looks down instead of at the door, hoping his hair hides the flush he can still feel across his face.

“Oh!” Soft. Feminine.

It’s not...

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else was awake.” Gentle. Melodic. 

It’s _not_... 

“Allura, hey…” Lance says.

Of fucking _course_ it is.

Keith doesn’t look at Lance; _can’t_. He retrieves his knife from the floor and tucks it into its sheath at his tailbone while keeping his head resolutely tilted so the longest part of his fringe falls between him and the red paladin.

“Keith–” Lance starts, at the same time Allura asks, “Am I interrupting–?” and their voices layered together are a bitter chaser to _closer...closer…_

“It’s fine,” he says quickly. “I should get some sleep, anyway.” Bullshit. He wonders if he’ll ever sleep again with Lance’s urgent compliments swirling in his head.

Lance catches his arm as he moves to leave, and Keith can only look at him for a second. It looks like he’s going to say something dangerous like _don’t go_. Keith hopes he looks sufficiently apologetic as he tugs his arm out of the other man’s grip and walks away.

Allura is in a simple white nightgown, blue robe tied loosely around it, falling partially off one dark shoulder. With the white of her hair, she practically glows, even in the faint light. Keith has never been interested in women, but even he can admit that she’s effortlessly stunning. Even more so because she looks genuinely surprised, and she always manages to make her concern look so _pretty_. It emphasizes the air of unending care about her; softens her already smooth edges. This would be so much easier if he could hate her. But it’s not her fault for being so lovely; and _certainly_ not her fault for finding _Lance_ to be lovely, too. Keith’d have to be a special kind of hypocrite to fault her for that.

While Lance’s words are still loud in his head, a whispered echo starts up in the silent spaces in between: _‘He thinks you’re all these things, and isn’t that nice, but what does he think of_ **_Allura_ ** _?’_

He smiles at her as he passes, but something in the way she looks at him makes him think it’s not convincing. “G’night,” he says, and closes the door before either Lance or Allura can answer, and only leans back against it for a second, chest tight, _not fucking breathing_ , before he’s running off down the hall. He thinks he might hear the door slide open again behind him, but he’s already rounded the next corner.

He makes it back to his room too fast. He wants to keep running; it’s been a long time since he’s felt the all-encompassing need to _go_ like this. He seriously, _seriously_ considers how long it might take him to get back to Earth, or to find another suitable planet (ideally uninhabited and alone in its solar system). If it weren’t for the fact that there are no other means of leaving the castle ship but the lions, he’s pretty sure he’d be unable to stop himself from fleeing.

By morning, after a few restless hours of half-sleep, he still can’t shake the urge. It’s quieted, somewhat, but the itch to get away from all the responsibility and messy _closer...closer…_ of Voltron is still tickling the nape of his neck. He’s not sure if it’s that or the desire to avoid Lance and Allura for as long as possible that has him seeking out Pidge before breakfast, asking if she can help him get a message to Kolivan. The Blade of Marmora could always use an extra set of hands, probably, and a few hours spent thinking only of survival and mission objectives sounds like a necessary reprieve.


	4. s04e01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene fixes and additions: Season 4, episode 1
> 
> Leaving is pretty fucked up, but so is staying, so Keith does what he thinks is best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's official: I could have finished my novella in the time and words it's taken to get to this point in this fanfiction. This is becoming a bit of a beast in my head. (...I regret nothing.) Thanks for the kind words/responses, they help quell the writer's guilt.

Keith is worth exactly nothing to the Blade of Marmora beyond the success of his missions, and he _basks_ in it.

It’s harsh, but it’s _real_. The way they operate is impossible to misinterpret: get in, complete the objective, get out. If you fuck up, it’s on _you_. The mission is _all_. Not the team, not the balance of power; not the handsome copilot with whom things have become unbearably awkward, not the gorgeous woman who’s anything _but_ awkward with said copilot…

The mission.

To be fair, there’s a certain kind of warmth in between. He enjoys a chat with Kolivan after briefings, and whichever Blades are on the mission are likely to get together before and after for drinks. But it’s a distant sort of camaraderie, undercut with the constant understanding that any of them would sacrifice the others for the greater good. He cares about his fellow Blades insomuch as he wants their plans to succeed, and he even genuinely enjoys the company of few of them, but there are no hurt feelings here. There are few feelings _at all_ here; no time for them when anyone might be pulled away for a mission there may be a slim chance of returning from.

He progresses fast with them, sinking easily into the stealthy, selfish headspace the job requires. He’s not sure why it feels, sometimes, like a regression. “Fine,” he answers when the team asks how his missions have gone, or, “good,” or “okay.” Because that _is_ how they go, and there’s not a whole lot going on in the Blades that’s worth reporting back about.

Hunk asks if he’s come across any new alien flavours, but the Blades generally switch between the same three or four meals, specifically created to provide as many nutrients as possible while still tasting...well, they’re edible, at any rate.

Pidge asks what their tech is like, but Keith doesn’t understand it, and can’t explain to her that _no_ , he _can’t_ just ask how it works, because the Blades each have their jobs to do, and it’s frowned upon to interrupt that out of simple curiosity. There’ll be time for curiosity if and when the war is won: that’s just _understood_ amongst the Blades.

Shiro asks if he’s made any new friends, but he doesn’t know how to answer that. Kind of? Maybe? Outside of Kolivan, he probably gets along best with Regris, Ilun, and Vrek. They’ve had a few pleasant conversations, laughing over carefully rationed drinks (hangovers aren’t advisable in war), but when it comes time to go they don’t seek each other out for tearful goodbyes or anything even remotely similar. He feels a little pang of sadness when they part ways, but if the others do as well, he doesn’t know. They all do the sensible thing: try to ignore the feeling, not deepen it by using hazardous words like _friends_. (Especially where Regris is involved, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Allura asks light, simple things, like if the journey back was smooth or if he’s gotten enough rest. He probably speaks the most with her, because describing the route they’d taken to avoid an asteroid field is easier than describing how disturbingly comfortable he finds it almost dying amongst a group of people who would spare him little more than a moment of silence.

Lance doesn’t ask for any details. Keith’s been bereft of _I gotcha_ , and especially of _closer...closer…,_ for weeks. He gets the odd taunt or barb from the red paladin, and he’s _nice_ and all...he’s just quiet, with a specific distance about him when it comes to Keith that the black paladin (Blade?) hasn’t felt since before _hey, man_. There’s no friction between them; friction would be easy— _normal_. Instead, there’s an empty space that both of them keep wordlessly ignoring. They're not even dancing around the weirdness so much as staring at the giant pink elephant in the room until it gets so uncomfortable it leaves.

But then, some of that might be coming from Keith’s side, because...well, if there’s one thing Regris isn’t, it’s hesitant, and maybe he’s gotten too used to that. Maybe he’s gotten rusty in dealing with all Lance’s oblique angles. Regris is the polar opposite of _we gotta fix it_ ; more _hey, wanna fuck_ and _calm down and take your pants off_. And Keith can’t lie—it’s _refreshing_. He _likes_ not having to guess at what Regris might mean. He _likes_ that, after saving his life ( _and_ the mission, thank you very much), his fellow Blade just looks at him seriously and says, “You know what this is—and what it _isn’t_ —yeah?”

And Keith _does_. He knows _exactly_ what it is, and just that fact makes up for the lonely edges of it. _Us_ dissolves before it has a chance to sound nice in his head, and even though _what this is and isn’t_ is odd-shaped and too large as it slides down his throat, it settles easily in his stomach.

Regris fucks him efficiently, no romance about it but _desperate_ and _fast_ _,_  the way he needs right now. It’s not about intimacy, not about liking each other, not about any feelings at all aside from the satisfaction of scratching a very particular itch. And while that itch doesn’t reside even remotely in the vicinity of _hey, Keith_ , it certainly helps him ignore his persistent Lance addiction; like a nicotine patch when what he really wants is the gratifying stink of a real smoke.

He and Lance don’t talk about what happened between them, but he and Regris don’t _have to_ , and it makes enough difference that he’s sure it _must_ be compounding the awkwardness. But then, Lance has his Allura... _thing_...and that certainly shows no signs of slowing, so maybe it’s for the best, anyway.

Still, it puts him an odd situation, trying his best to flit back and forth between opposite ideals. He still cares too much on his Marmora missions; too little while piloting Voltron. He feels less and less like the black paladin by the day; more like a Blade who the black lion lets pilot her in the absence of a better option (no matter how many times he tells her that Shiro is _right here_ ; no matter how many times he trails off at her unmistakable accusation that he _can’t be, though_ ).

It inevitably becomes an issue.

Shiro keeps reminding him that he _has to_ lead Voltron; that he _has to_ accept it; that they _have to_ make it work— _has to, have to_ starts to cling to his uvula so he can feel it every time he swallows. He’s _sick_ with _has to, have to_. Besides, as much as Shiro claims to have accepted his new position, he’s not exactly forthcoming about what that position _is_. He pushes Keith to lead, but when Keith suggests that they team up with the Blades to tail Lotor, he shuts the idea down like _he’s_ the one in control.

Escorting refugees and executing diplomatic spectacles are painfully trivial when his fellow Blades are out there risking their lives, hiding in the dirty corners of the war, getting things _done_. And he’s stuck “leading” a team who look to someone else for their orders.

_____________

They’re talking about a _show_ ; about _choreography_ . He _hates_ Lance’s voice when it gets like this, tinged with razzle dazzle and posturing. It makes him seem painfully young, no trace of the calm or introspection Keith knows he’s capable of. When Kolivan interrupts to brief them on evidence of a quintessence supply train linked to Lotor, Keith is chomping at the bit to volunteer to check it out before he even asks for Voltron’s assistance.

“Hey, what about our performance?” Lance asks indignantly. Keith balks at him, but he just doubles down. “We can’t razzle dazzle the crowd with just four lions!”

“This mission is more important than a show of arms," Keith counters. He can’t believe he even has to explain this; can’t believe that _no one is backing him up._ “ _Shiro,_ ” he intones like a teenager, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He doesn’t know who to make it any clearer what the right course of action is, and it’s _dumb_.

He’s supposed to be the black paladin of Voltron, and he can’t even convince his team to let him go after their biggest threat instead of prancing around throwing confetti. Shiro actually asks Kolivan _how long it’ll take_ , like Keith’s asking permission to sleep over at a friend’s house. But it gets his brother to allow him to go, so he keeps his frustration to himself.

It’s a time sensitive mission, but even still, he pulls Regris aside right after they're briefed on the Marmora transport ship and does his utmost to suck any pre-mission nerves out through his dick. Not because he  _has to_ , but because he _wants to_. If the four-fingered hand in his hair and Regris’s pleased, laughter-tinged moans are anything to go by, he thinks Keith’s plan of action is a _fantastic_ idea; goes along easily with his talented, tongue-twirling “leadership”.

_____________

He shouldn’t have suggested they stay on the Galra ship long enough to plant the tracker. They should have left as soon as Kolivan said to. It’s the utmost proof of his inability to lead effectively: Regris dies on a ship they’d only been on because he’d insisted they stay long enough to fall into a trap.

His side burns something fierce as Kolivan wraps it up, the cold of space having left him with a large, throbbing raw spot on his ribs. He’s in a spare suit, the top rolled down to his hips. “It was his own fault,” Kolivan says sternly. “He understood the risks.”

“He thought he could stop the explosion…”

“And he couldn’t.” Kolivan ties the makeshift bandage off with a definitive snap. “He overestimated his own abilities one too many times, and now we’re down an agent.”

Keith swallows hard.

Right.

Down an agent.

The war, and all that.

 _He overestimated his own abilities one too many times_. Is that something Regris had been prone to? Thinking he was hot shit? God, Keith’d had the man _inside him_ , and he’d had no idea that had been a character flaw of his. Regris had _come down his throat_ hardly an hour before a trait that Keith _hadn’t even known about_ had gotten him killed.

Beside him, Kolivan sighs, and rests his elbows on his knees.

“He was a good agent, and a good man,” he says. “Sometimes we lose good agents, good people, even when we make objectively good decisions.” His hand is large and warm on Keith’s shoulder; paternal. “You weren’t wrong to suggest planting the tracker. It’s okay to let it hurt. Just don’t let it distract you. _Use_ it.”

Keith nods, and wonders how it’ll be possible to mourn just enough, but not too much, for someone he hadn’t even really known, but had known entirely too well.

They receive an increasingly annoyed series of messages from Voltron as soon as they pass into close enough space.

“Keith, where are you? We’re scheduled to start in 15 dobashes, and we can’t form Voltron without you.”

“Keith, come in. We can’t hold off any longer, join the performance when you can.”

“Keith, I know your mission is important, but we’re going to make fools of ourselves out here if you don’t hurry up.”

“ _Keith_. Report when you get this. We might be able to hold the crowd a little longer… _maybe_...”

“Well, _thanks a lot_ , Keith. That was a _complete disaster_. Coran had to _describe_ Voltron at the finale.”

(“Hey! I thought I did alright…”)

The fury Keith feels is so sudden and white-hot that it flashes out and settles into a thick black membrane almost instantaneously, stretched airtight over all his thoughts. He takes the comm from Kolivan with steady hands, quiet and collected. Kolivan says his name worriedly, but Keith tells him it’s okay in a voice so calm it’s eerie, even to himself.

Serenely, he fucking _seethes_.

Shiro answers almost before the line has a chance to beep. “Keith?”

“Confirmed.” It’s Marmora terminology. Usually he’s more casual with Voltron, who don’t have to stick to a code to verify membership. Right now, though, he doesn’t particularly feel like a part of Voltron.

“Keith, what happened?” Shiro pauses, then adds with an edge of frustration, “Where _are_ you?”

“The ship was a decoy,” he explains flatly. “It was rigged to explode. We lost…” He purses his lips. “One of the Blades died in the blast. I’ll need an hour in a pod when I get back.”

He can tell it’s not what Shiro’s expecting to hear, and certainly not the way he’s expecting to hear it. “It...someone _died_?”

Keith hums. “Regris,” he says. The name makes his throat close, but he swallows around it; makes himself remember the feel of the man against his back and _you know what this is, right_? Kolivan is right: it hurts. But it’s unavoidable; _real_ , like everything is with the Marmora, and Keith refuses to let it distract him. He _uses it_. 

“Why do you need a pod? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he says. “Just got a tear in my suit; a little freezer burn on my way back to the ship.” His side throbs like he’s dripping molten metal on it.

“Keith, were you...were you _in_ the explosion?”

Keith hums again.

“ _Keith_ –”

“I’m sorry about the... _performance._ ” The disdain on the word is the first bit of emotion to peek through the black latex of his mood. “I didn’t mean to let the the— _Voltron_ —down.”

“We...we didn’t…” 

Keith takes perhaps too much pleasure in Shiro’s discomfort; wonders if Regris would have laughed, tickled by the turnabout, or found it sad. He guesses he’ll never know as he says mechanically, “Blade ship delta gamma zero three nine anticipating castle ship dock in thirty-two doboshes.”

“Keith, what…?”

“Castle ship, please confirm transmission. Blade ship delta gamma zero three–”

“ _Confirmed_ ,” Shiro says, “It’s...yeah, it’s confirmed. We’ll see you in half an hour. Keith, talk to me, what’s–?”

“Delta gamma zero three nine, Blade identity Keith, sign out.”

____________

He expects Shiro to be waiting for him, but it’s Allura who greets him at the dock bay doors. Beneath his suit, his side is on fire, shouting at him every time he moves. He’s left Kolivan on the ship to contact a few other Blades and update them on the mission failure, calling as many back as he can before they get caught in similar traps. He wants nothing more than to climb into a healing pod and sink into unconsciousness for a precious hour or two.

“Allura, I know you’re mad at me, but I’m not in the mood for a lecture.” 

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I heard what happened on your mission.”

Of course she is. Sweet, charming Allura, with her _Keith, come in, we need you_ melting so easily into _I’m sorry, I heard what happened._ “Thanks,” Keith says hollowly, because how can she be sorry for something she can’t possibly understand?

“I know how important the work you’ve been doing with the Blades is,” she continues, all soft eyes and carefully even tone. “They’re incredible allies, and have been instrumental in our victories over the Galra. And while the news of a new quintessence supply line is deeply troubling, I cannot help but feel…”

“I _said_ ,” Keith says, “I didn’t want a lecture.” He likes her; really, he does. But on top of everything else, all the messiness with Voltron and the Blades and Lance and Regris, her insistence on saying her piece as diplomatically as possible has him irritated.

“ _Keith_ ,” she replies, emphatic and almost motherly. “Since our battle with Zarkon, we’ve been able to bolster our forces by uniting those previously ruled by the Galra under a common symbol: Voltron. It’s so much more than a weapon; it’s become a symbol of freedom and hope for the oppressed to rally around. I suppose what I’m trying to say is…” She has the grace to look apologetic; concerned. “The Marmora can go on without you. They have for thousands of years. Voltron cannot. _We_ cannot.”

He works his jaw soundlessly, unsure what to say as several _choice_ words fly to the forefront of his mind. For a few seconds, all he can do is let out a tight breath, choppy with rage.

“Regris is dead,” he says after a long pause.

Allura seems taken aback by that. “I’m...sorry…” she says hesitantly.

“Regris is _dead_.”

He only realizes he’s approaching the princess when he sees her take a hesitant step backward. “I…”

“He’s _dead_ ,” Keith repeats. “We were tracking the most _dangerous man in the universe’s_ supply of the most _dangerous substance in the universe_ , and Regris got _blown to shit_ because of it.” So close up, practically breathing down the bridge of her nose, Keith can see the black of her pupils swallow her pretty blue irises with fear.

She says nothing.

“With all due respect, Allura, right at this point in time,” he leans in; looks her in the eye so there’s no mistaking him. “ _Fuck_ your symbol.”

She lets out a shaky breath as he brushes past, and it’s only then that Keith realizes she’d been truly, legitimately _afraid_. He’ll feel bad about it in a few hours, laying awake with Regris’s _just a few more ticks_ playing Marco Polo with Allura’s _the Marmora can go on without you_ , but in the moment he feels a slimy, satisfying vindication.

He strips his suit down to his hips again while he makes his way toward the healing pods, unwrapping Kolivan’s bandages and yanking unceremoniously at them where they’ve stuck to the blood and plasma seeping from his side. He grunts at the intense, unforgiving burn, but yanks again all the same, wadding the soiled strips up in his fist. He’s unsurprised to find Coran and Shiro waiting for him by an open pod, but they’re certainly surprised to see him. 

“ _Keith_ …” It says a lot that Coran stops at just his name, staring at the weeping flesh on his ribs, no over-the-top reactions to be seen. He just turns to the console and starts typing, reprogramming the pod now that he’s seen the damage firsthand. 

Keith strips the rest of his suit off and climbs into the pod without taking Shiro’s silently offered hand. His brother looks him over without comment, though he’s thinking so loudly Keith is tempted to tell him to pipe down. Somehow, his distorted face through the pod’s carnival mirror glass seems far too appropriate.

___________

He stumbles out of the pod nearly two hours later, still exhausted despite the rest. There’s a pink, raised, somewhat sore outline clinging to his ribs, but he’s already stepping into his discarded suit by the time Coran says, “You should stay in for a bit longer…” He hadn’t even noticed him there, observing from the other side of the room.

“It’s fine,” Keith says. His ribs itch beneath the tight fabric of his Blade uniform as he zips up. The edges will most likely raise even more into angry red dotted lines. It’ll be an ugly scar, reminiscent of an explosive cartoon flare screaming _POW_ or _NOW 40% OFF_. He hopes, anyway. It’ll remind him what this war is, and what it isn’t.

Kolivan, Ilun, Vrek, and two Blades Keith doesn’t recognize are in the control room with the paladins when he gets there, all of them standing around a projection of the booby-trapped supply route. Vrek meets him halfway across the room, pulling him into a utilitarian embrace, clapping him on the back. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he says as he pulls back. “Regris was...it’s a great loss.”

It’s stilted; so emotionally shallow Keith would miss the distress in it if it didn’t mirror his own inability— _refusal_ —to be genuine in these situations, too. “Yeah,” he replies, and squeezes Vrek’s shoulder, and tries to figure out whether it bothers him more that Regris is dead, or that the pain of it is already receding back behind more important matters. 

The paladins say remarkably little to him; give him a wide berth. Allura clears her throat when he approaches, and puts Lance, Shiro, _and_ Hunk in between them. They must know what happened outside the loading dock. Keith can’t find it in himself to be regretful about that yet.

Kolivan keeps the strategy talk going, but Keith keeps his two cents mostly to himself, speaking up only when he’s asked to. Voltron offers even less, silent until Shiro shakes his head solemnly. “We don’t have the manpower for this,” he says. “We lose a single paladin, we lose Voltron.”

“I agree,” Allura says, stiff and avoiding Keith’s gaze at all costs. “We’re happy to share our intelligence, and we’ll come to your aid, if needed, however we can. But we cannot afford to put our team at risk.”

Kolivan says, “I understand,” at the exact same time Keith says, “There’s no way I’m not helping.”

Allura swallows and looks at her hands, regally folded in front of her. Everyone, even Kolivan, looks markedly uncomfortable (aside perhaps from Ilun, Vrek, and the unknown Blades, who seem more confused than anything).

“Keith,” Shiro starts, and it’s his perfect _you-don’t-understand-now-but-one-day-you-will_ voice, and Keith really, really isn’t interested in anything he’s about to say.

“There’s a zero percent chance I’m not supporting the Marmora on these missions,” he says, matter-of-fact. He’s not angry; there _is_ no anger to express. He’s too tired for anger. He’s just sure; totally positive. He doesn’t have to argue, because unless Voltron is planning on strapping him into Black’s cockpit chair, he’s simply _not going in for anyone’s bullshit right now_. (No one’s but his own, at any rate, and that’s quite enough to parse through, thanks.)

“I dunno, Keith, I kind of agree with Shiro here…”

Keith looks at Hunk blankly. “ _Zero. Percent. Chance_.”

“Look, I know this is hard for you, but I think you need to–” Lance sounds frustrated, with an edge to his voice not uncommon when he’s butting heads with Keith.

“I really don’t care— _at all_ —what you think.”

Lance flinches back physically, as if he’s been flicked on the nose like a bad dog. Keith knows it's not true, but he also knows intimately and bitterly _what this isn’t. I_ t’s a cold, tight grip around his heart, but he hopes Lance is starting to get it now, too.

“I can’t justify escort missions and _razzle dazzle_ while the Marmora are sacrificing themselves for the intel we need to win this war. I can still fly the black lion, but in between missions…” He clenches his jaw. He can see the fight on their faces; doesn’t know how to make them understand. He looks right at Allura and tries to make his expression as calm as possible. “The Marmora can go on without me, but _I_ can’t go on without _them_.”

She doesn’t look away. Her folded hands fall to her sides. Shiro makes to retort, but she places a gentle hand on his crossed arms. “I understand,” she says, and it sounds like she really does, so Keith can’t figure out why she sounds so sad.

_____________

It’s so easy to fall into the rhythm of full-time Blade with a paladin gig on the side that Keith is almost taken aback when it inevitably goes south. He knows that Voltron has been getting steadily more frustrated with his absences, but he finds it harder and harder to care.

Allura looks at him, pitying, as his mask zaps into place over his face and he turns away from where they’re handing aid packages to refugees, and he _knows_ it’s important work; _knows_ that war is more than just espionage and fighting. He just feels incredibly separate from that work—not cut out for it—and seeing the way Voltron takes to it like it’s nothing just makes him feel more like an _other_. And feeling so disconnected, mired in Marmora work, he finds it difficult to care about the fact that they look at him more and more like a stranger. 

It’s a relationship in its death throes; he knows that. Were they a married couple, they’d be climbing into bed two hours apart, ringless, intoning _g’night_ and masturbating efficiently and obviously at opposite ends of the bed.

Still, he doesn’t expect it to end as explosively as it does. He’s prepared for halting, shallow explanations offered out of expectation rather than necessity. He's not ready for a sneak attack that literally forces Shiro into a do-or-die situation.

And okay, he may not really _fit_ with them anymore, but Voltron is…

In his months with the Marmora, he’s nearly lost his fair share of mission partners, but he’s no longer even tempted by heroic, life-saving acts. Regris’s death has faded to a dull throb; a cut at the back of his mouth he only really notices if he bites down wrong or purposely prods at it with his tongue. His work with the Blades is important, and he does care about the wellbeing of his team. He _does_. He's just also, as a Blade of Marmara prerequisite, prepared to watch any and all of them die.

 _But_.

Just the _thought_ of any member of Voltron being hurt...being worse than hurt…

Voltron, he knows, is his biggest weakness, because no matter how little they understand each other, he considers them the only family he’s ever really known, and he can’t stand the thought of something happening to them. He leaves them to their diplomatic rallying, and while it still feels like a waste of Voltron’s resources in a lot of ways, it also makes it easier knowing that _he’s_ the one flying headlong into danger, not them.

So when he passes into close enough airspace and hears the frantic series of calls for help, Kolivan has to physically wrench him from the controls to stop him speeding off (they’re in a sensitive area that requires deft handling around various neutral and enemy zones).

He listens to them scream, listens to them _panic_ …

Listens as Shiro’s voice cuts in, deep and confident and _coming from Black’s cockpit_.

He’s so relieved he lets out a dry hiccup of a sob and has to take a second bent over the console, breathing fast; so relieved that he rushes to the control room as soon as he’s docked, forgetting that the reason they’d been in such dire straits in the first place is because _he wasn’t there._

They’d been in danger, and he’d been half a galaxy away. He remembers the black latex of his mood when Regris had been killed, and while his reason for missing the fight had been a little more pressing than a _performance_ , it doesn’t make his non-appearance any better. The fact remains: they could have _died_ while he was off with the Marmara. And honestly, it’d piss him off, too, if he were in their shoes.

Still, the _glare_ he gets from the team; the _vitriol_ in the atmosphere…it’s like being served with papers and a restraining order instead of the mutual sit-down he’d been expecting. It’s _contact my lawyer_ where he’d been expecting _I think we need to talk_. 

Fair enough.

“I heard what happened,” he says, because it’s what Allura had said to him, so it must be at least the right- _ish_ thing. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help.”

“You keep saying you’re sorry, but your actions say otherwise,” Allura snaps, and she’s _mad_. Legitimately  _fuming_. He feels like a child being called by his full name, figuring out that disappointing a parent is so much worse than just pissing them off. “Do you realize that your absence put the team in jeopardy?”

“And not just the team,” Lance adds. “The refugees as well!” And _shit_ , if disappointing a parent is bad, disappointing... _whatever the fuck_ Lance has become to him...is so much worse. Especially because it highlights the latest in a series of fundamental differences that Keith can no longer ignore: Lance is intrinsically a paladin of Voltron, half his focus on the refugees they’d been protecting, _affronted_ that something could have happened to them. Keith hasn’t even really _thought_ about any other casualties besides those to the war effort or to his team.

“Matter of fact, the entire quadrant was in danger,” Pidge points out, and _alright_. He _gets it_.

“This is not the way I wanted this to happen,” Keith says, looking down. “But if there’s a bright side to any of this, it’s that my absence allowed Shiro to reestablish his bond with the black lion. He can finally be the leader I was unable to be. I’m not…” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not _meant_ to pilot the black lion.”

_I’m meant to fight dark and dirty._

_Alone._

“Is that why you’ve been pulling away from us?” Allura asks, and she sounds less righteously pissed, at least.

Keith shrugs uncomfortably. He’d thought it was a _mutual_ pulling, in all honesty, but it occurs to him that it might have had more to do with him. Between finding out about his Galra heritage and running off to join the Blades (between his nothing-something- _no-nothing_ with Lance and the odd disjointedness with Shiro), he can’t really remember the last time he truly felt like a part of the team. He can’t remember the last time he _wanted_ to be. 

“Yeah,” he answers. “I suppose that’s part of it.”

“Part of it?” Hunk asks. “What’s the other part?”

He wants to say, in a soft, pseudo-English accent, _‘Voltron can go on without me. They have for months. The Marmora cannot,’_ but it’s bitter in a way he doesn’t really feel. Besides, he has more legitimate reasons to draw on. “The Blades have been making real headway tracking the source of this new quintessence,” he says. “They’ve been able to piece together a large network of hidden supply lines that have been secretly transporting it for who knows how long. And there’s good reason to believe it could lead us directly to Lotor.”

This is weird. The whole thing; all of it: weird. He’s finally in control, can finally _really_ call the shots, even if it’s only his own actions he’s controlling, but it feels like he’s half asking their permission, justifying his choice to go before he’s even told them he’s going. It doesn’t help that they seem caught between concern and the last vestiges of annoyance.

“A mission is being planned to infiltrate the supply line. It could take weeks, maybe months, to pull off; but if there is a chance, we have–” He cuts himself off. _Has to, have to_ still tastes sour, but not so much when it’s preceded with _I_. “ _I have_ to take it. I need to be on that mission.”

They all look worried, now. It seems to sink in that this is more than _this isn’t working out_ ; this is _who gets the car and who gets the house_. This is _my lawyer will be in touch to talk about visitation_.

“Shiro, you are the rightful leader of this team, and you proved it today by reconnecting with the black lion. It was always meant to be yours…” He trails off. It’s the most he’s spoken to the team in weeks. He feels drained of conversation.

“Keith.”

For the first time in too long, Shiro’s big hand on his shoulder is a comfort. He looks at his older brother wide-eyed, feeling twelve years old again.

“If this is what you feel is right, then we won’t try to stop you.” Like they could. It’s easier this way, though, and they both know it. “Just know that we’re here for you whenever you need us.”

The whole point is that they don’t need each other anymore, but Keith appreciates the sentiment; smiles anyway. “I know you are,” he says, and then he’s against Shiro’s wide chest, trying to memorize the scent of home on him before they part; trying to figure out why it doesn’t quite smell right.

___________

Considering how awkward things have been, it’s more difficult to leave than Keith had anticipated.

 

He wakes up the next morning to find his Marmora suit missing. At the breakfast table, he finds it attached to Pidge’s laptop, glowing in a heap beside a pile of what Hunk approximates as pancakes (Keith actually prefers them to the real thing). “I’m installing a panic comm,” she explains around a mouthful. “If you get into trouble, just activate it and it’ll send out a boosted SOS signal, direct to us. Don’t use it unless you have to, though—it’s a huge power drain. You only get one shot to call, and it'll kill a few other systems.”

She peers up at him over the rim of her glasses. “Be careful. As much as I’m going to miss you, I really hope you never have to use this.”

He agrees. He spends the rest of the morning idling near her, asking what other mods she can put into the suit (not many; Marmora programming is obtuse even for her). As lunch rolls around, he reluctantly pulls her in for a one-armed hug, and tells her to take care of herself. It’s a little odd, the two of them rarely physical with each other, but she returns the embrace all the same, and tells him she’ll bother Lance sufficiently in his absence.

 

Hunk serves him a veritable feast for lunch, including two helpings of that DQ sundae stand-in that Keith finds inexplicably addictive. He forces Keith to stand in the kitchen and watch how it’s made. “I’ve seen what the Blades eat, man. You’ll _starve_ if you try to live on that,” he insists. Keith doesn’t really pay attention; he _can’t_ , with Hunk’s hands moving so rapidly, using words the new Blade has never heard before, like _blanch_ and _meuniere_. But he likes watching the yellow paladin move around the space. He looks good with an air of confidence around him, lacking his usual nervousness.

After he takes his first bite, he can’t stop his eyes fluttering closed. “I’m going to miss this _so much_ ,” he says, but really he’s going to miss the way Hunk’s face lights up at the compliment. He gets a carefully packaged container of a suspicious looking viscous liquid that smells exactly like a _caramel sundae_ from DQ, and though it’s difficult to pack, he’ll savour it, bite by tiny bite, for the next two weeks.

 

Allura, thankfully, is with Coran when Keith goes to say goodbye. He’s not exactly sure where things stand with her. He gets the odd impression that she understands him better than anyone, and yet can’t figure out what to do with him (honestly, the feeling might be mutual).

Coran claps him on the back and relates a long Altean proverb that has little to do with anything, but Allura hangs back, quiet. When he moves to hug her goodbye, she puts her hands on his shoulders, keeping him at arm’s length. “I know you will make us proud,” she says, and Keith finds himself reddening somewhat, unused to this kind of matronly attention. He wonders if this is how it felt for the other kids at school during their holiday concerts, toeing the ground as their parents fawned _oh, we’re just so proud of you!_

“I’m sorry if things have been…”

He doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

He doesn’t know what he means by _things_.

She just shakes her head. “It is not your fault.”

She doesn’t elaborate on what she means by _it_ , but there’s a certain vague uncertainty about her expression that makes Keith think there’s a reason for that.

“Allura...I really _am_ going to miss you.”

She smiles a watery smile, and pulls him into her body with a surprising strength. “I will miss you, too, Keith,” she says sincerely, muffled against his shoulder.

 

Shiro is in the hangar, leaning back against Black. Keith joins him silently. He kind of expects an inspirational speech, but Shiro just looks at him, all warm smile and paternal vibes. Keith can feel a hesitance from Black, mixed with confusion and an urging he can’t quite place, but eventually the lion sends him a sort of regretful _see you later_ feeling through what’s left of their bond.

“I’m not going to say goodbye, because we’ll see each other again soon,” Shiro says after a bit, and it's somehow not like him, but Keith smiles at him, anyway.

 

Lance is nowhere, until the last minute.

Keith is less than an hour from take-off, running one last time through his meager list of packed items, putting the rest of his things in a box on his bed to be stored until his return. When there's a knock at his door, he expects Kolivan—the Galran should be docking any moment—but instead of his commander, he’s greeted with, “Hey, Keith…”

He opens his mouth to greet him, but Lance is pushing into his space before he has a chance. He backs up instinctively, but the red paladin doesn’t stop. The door slides shut behind him, but the hiss is obscured by the sound of Keith’s back hitting the wall. “What–?” 

Lance’s hands on his cheeks are strangely foreign since he’s been without them for so long. He’d almost forgotten the strength in the slender fingers; the way they tend to surprise him into leaving his arms limp and inelegant at his sides. They shut him up more effectively than if they’d clamped over his mouth.

Lance is close; getting closer.

Closer... _closer…_

So close Keith has to close his eyes to avoid crossing them.

So close he can taste the remnants of Hunk’s DQ dessert on Lance’s breath.

So close…

_So close…_

Keith will be embarrassed, later on, at the noise he makes when Lance kisses him for the first time. It’s a little shuddery hum with a sharp inhale of an exclamation point. In the moment, though, he doesn’t really register that he’s made any noise at all. He doesn’t register anything but the abstract idea that _Lance McClain is kissing him_. He’s too shocked to pull away; couldn’t even if he wanted to, with Lance’s hands framing his face and his solid warmth holding him hostage against the wall.

The moment puts itself together in random segments: Lance’s lips are soft; he inhales deep and slow at the first press of them; Keith is suddenly aware of the dry edges of his own lips; Lance moves slowly, but not hesitantly; Keith moves back against him, hesitantly, but not slowly; it feels nice… 

It feels _nice_.

It’s tinged with all the blundering of a first kiss; all the unsurety, the failed experiments trying to figure out preferences, the nervousness that _maybe you’re not as good at this as you think_.

But it’s nice.

It’s painfully, horribly, dangerously _nice_.

Keith’s heart is a rolling snare in his chest by the time they part, his hands shaking at his sides. It’s not a particularly long kiss, but they’re both breathing hard like it was. There’s that little brown spot in Lance’s staggeringly blue eyes, again. Keith finds himself trying to memorize the exact shape of it; the way it’s so fucking perfect inside Lance’s pleading expression.

“I’m sorry,” Lance says, too loud for how close he is, but Keith doesn’t mind at all. “I know things have been messed up. I just…” His eyes close tight, like he’s fighting a cramp. “You’re going to be _gone_ , and I couldn’t let you go without…” When he opens his eyes again, he’s got that desperate look about him that he seems to always have when anything like this happens between them; like he’s begging forgiveness for actions he’s only tempted to take. “I just needed to...just...”

Keith nods, because he gets it. “It’s okay,” he breathes, because it is. Lance’d had to scratch a very particular itch; one that resides _exactly_ in the vicinity of _h_ _ey, Keith_. It’s not enough, not nearly; but it’s enough for now. Enough to satisfy the fear that they’d always be a _never;_  not even a _that one time_.

Keith pushes forward this time, kisses Lance to press onto his lips all the ways it’s not okay, not really, but it so, _so_ is. His brings his hands up to the red paladin’s jaw, this time, and if Lance can feel him shaking, he really doesn't care.

When they part again, Keith can’t open his eyes. He keeps them clamped shut against the brokenness of his own voice as he murmurs, “We can’t do this.”

A rush of air comes pouring out Lance’s mouth, and it sounds like it hurts. When Keith is able to force his eyes open again, he finds the expression on the other man’s face matches the sound. “But–” he starts, and Keith knows he can’t let him continue; knows he’s far too likely to let himself be convinced. 

“I want to,” he says. “I _want_ to, I just...we _can’t_.” He lets his hands drop from Lance’s jaw; pulls gently to the side until he can step out from between him and the wall. He wonders how long the feeling of Lance’s limp hands sliding from his cheeks will haunt him. The red paladin doesn’t move aside from letting his arms fall to hug himself around the middle. His gaze stays where Keith had been moments before.

“I’m about to leave for who knows how long, and the mission is...it’s _dangerous_. If something happens to me, you guys probably won’t even know until the mission is complete. We can’t start something under these circumstances.”

Lance looks at his feet. “It wouldn’t hurt any less,” he protests. “Anything happening to you isn’t an option, whether we’re doing this or not.”

Keith bites at the inside of his cheek. “It wouldn’t be fair, though. What are you supposed to do, wait around for someone you dated for all of forty-five minutes?”

Lance seems to be getting smaller and smaller, huddling into himself. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “What would be so bad about that…?”

Keith sighs through his nose. _Fucking sharpshooter_. It’s a tender spot to hit so dead on. “I know. I’d wait, too…” he acknowledges.

“Then _why_?”

Keith doesn’t want to do this; it’s too messy, too blurry, too many _too_ s, especially this close to his send-off, but it’s finally become unavoidable.

“Because you’ll be here with Allura,” he says, and tries to keep his voice as even as possible. Easy; unaffected in exactly the way he’s not.

Lance winces; angles his head away so Keith can no longer make out the expression on it, even in profile.

“It’s fine, okay? I mean, it’s _not_ , but…” Keith takes a second to steady himself. He thinks about putting his hand on Lance’s shoulder, but he’s worried the paladin will flinch away, and he’s not ready to be on the receiving end of that yet. “I don’t blame you for liking her. She’s great. You’d be great together. You’d be _perfect_ …” He has to stop for a moment before he starts sounding too bitter. “I know there could be something here, between us...but there could be something _there_ , too. Something easier than what I can offer. I’ll be on the other side of the universe, and she’ll be _right here_. And if she’s good for you, I don’t want to stand in the way of that.” 

Lance looks at him again, and he looks so _tortured_ , and Keith wants to kiss him again and again and again until he smiles, even if it twists with tears as he walks away.

But he can’t.

“I wouldn’t. If we were to...I don’t cheat,” Lance says.

Keith shakes his head. “I know you wouldn’t. You’d stay faithful, and it would _hurt_ you. There could be a chance for you to be really, _truly_ happy, and you’d snub it for my sake, and I can’t stand that.”

“What if my chance to be really, truly happy is _you_?”

Keith has to look away. He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. “I won’t see you for months. I could be dead in a matter of days.”

“ _Don’t–_ ”

“This is a _war_ , Lance. The last time I got close to someone, I watched him get blown up. As much as we don’t want things to happen to the people we care about, sometimes they still do.”

The oblique reference to Regreis turns the atmosphere a little awkward. Lance knows that he and Regris had been...intimate. The whole team does, ever since Ilun, after their meeting, had intoned seriously over one too many drinks, “I’m going to miss Regris’s dick.” Keith, who’d not joined Voltron in their alcoholic abstinence (had simply raised his eyebrows challengingly at Shiro’s somewhat questioning, somewhat disapproving look at the bottle in his fist), had looked surprised only for a moment before adding absently, a little more than tipsy, “Me, too," and clinking Ilun's offered glass.

“Look, Lance...if _liking_ someone could make a relationship work, I’d be all over this. But no matter how much I like you...and it’s...it’s _a lot,_  I...it’s not going to change the fact that there are unresolved feelings— _strong_ feelings—between you and someone else. It’s not going to change the fact that both of us are going to be in danger countless times between now and when we see each other again. And it’s _not_ …” He looks up, and knows he must look just about as tortured as Lance does, now. He’s confusing _himself_ , let alone Lance. He’s jumbling his words, saying too much and too little, emphasizing all the wrong places.

He wants to explain more. More about how he doesn’t even understand himself right now, and so can’t be expected to try and figure someone else out.

More about how it smarts something fierce, but he can’t help but think that Allura is _better_ for Lance than he is, with all her clarity and playful docility.

More about how he can’t shake the selfish desire to have Allura turn out to be a _total bitch_ , in the end (even though he doesn’t want that at all).

“It’s not going to change the fact that we just _can’t do this_ ,” he says. “It’s not your fault, or mine, or Allura’s. It’s no one’s fault. And I want to _so bad_ , I can’t tell you. We just  _can’t_...”

Keith becomes aware that he’s crying a little as his voice cracks; turns _can’t_ into _ca-ann’t-hah_. And then it becomes obvious that Lance is crying, too, pulling Keith against shoulders that are shaking in intervals too regular to be anything but quiet sobs.

They cling to each other. Neither of them cry hard; just enough that it’s awkwardly unmistakeable. Lance gasps a few wet _I’m sorry_ s and _I never meant for this to happen_ s, and Keith answers with a few of his own _no don’t be_ s and _it’s just a shitty situation_ s. His cheek itches where it’s pressed against Lance’s shoulder, uncomfortably wet, but Keith finds an odd sort of comfort in it. Nothing where he and Lance are concerned has been comfortable, so why should this be?

Eventually, they stop crying. Neither is sure who runs out of steam first. They split apart reluctantly and mutually. Keith keeps his eyes somewhere in the vicinity of Lance’s clavicle, sniffling hard.

A beat passes, then two, and then Lance says with a tart little chuckle, “Well. This just fuckin’ _sucks_ , eh?” He’s clearly tired; his voice is edged with an accent: a hint of _fockin’ socks_.

Keith can’t help it. He laughs, too, harder and louder and longer. “Yup.”

Lance takes one last deep, warbling breath, and then looks seriously at Keith, brown imperfection on display. “Look, Keith, I get why we can’t go down this road right now. I just need you to know that I care about you. Whether we’re friends or teammates or allies or _whatever_ , I care about you, and nothing is going to change that, okay? And I’m here for you.” He smiles, all soft and effortless and _Lance_. “And you’d better come back, Mullet. It’d be a tragedy if you died with _that_ haircut.”

Keith laughs again. It hurts. His whole body feels tender and overworked. But at least he doesn’t have to guess at the sore spots, now; can see a little more clearly exactly _how_ things are fucked up, and it’s a little more than marginally better. The entirety of their circumstances is _agonizing_ , but he can see its ugly form from a few more angles; can start to work out how and where to make it settle.

“Only if you practice your evasion drills while I’m gone,” he counters. “Red is still way too much heat for you. I expect you to be able to handle her a little better by the time I get back, Cargo Pilot.”

Lance gives him a lingering kiss on the cheek on his way out, and follows it up with one last graze from that impossibly smooth thumb. Keith lets himself lean into it.

“Stay safe, Samurai.”

“You, too, Sharpshooter.”


	5. s04e06

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene additions: Season 4, episode 6
> 
> It turns out almost offing one's self has far greater ramifications than Keith had anticipated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only reaction we get to Keith's almost-kamikaze mission in the show is a "Great job, Keith!" from Shiro. Keith's not even in the next episode. So that's pretty fucked up.

The Blade of Marmora changes Keith in a deep, fundamental way, and he doesn’t realize it until he nearly kills himself.

Actually, that’s not fair. He doesn’t realize it even then, in the shadow of a Galra cruiser, shutting his eyes against the rapidly approaching pink shine of his death.

He doesn’t realize it when he registers the odd, space-hushed buzz of a cannon piercing the force field and he’s _just_ able to pull out, not totally convinced that he hasn't died for real and the flames he's racing are coming straight from hell.

He doesn’t even realize it when, upon returning to the castle to liaison on exactly what the _hell_ Lotor is playing at, Lance comes careening around the corner and very nearly tackles him.

At first, seeing the blur of blue and white whipping so quickly toward him, Keith assumes that Lance is rushing to gather backup. He’d gotten the message that Lotor was safely in captivity, but he doesn’t put it past the Galra to have pulled some trick to overthrow Voltron from the inside. He’s unprepared for Lance to slam into him; it takes him back a few steps, an aborted question about what’s happening leaving his mouth in an ungraceful _oof_. Lance’s arms wrap around him for a second, rib-crackingly tight, and then his hands are _everywhere_ , pressing against his shoulders, back, hips, arms, everywhere he can reach without pulling back from where he’s wedged himself resolutely against Keith, face tucked into the crook of his neck in a way that’s so intimate it instinctively makes the Blade want to squirm away.

Lance is talking, Keith thinks, but it’s hoarse and jumpy. His voice is a wet, skipping record, repeating itself here and skittering too fast there. It takes a second before Keith realizes he’s not actually speaking English, for the most part, but rather a mix of Spanish and English and formless, frantic sounds that aren’t in any language at all.

“Lance,” Keith says, confused. “ _Lance_.”

If the red paladin hears him, he only shows it by clinging even harder.

Keith’s voice softens. “Hey. It’s okay,” he says, hesitantly wrapping his arms around the other man’s quaking shoulders. He blinks at the top of the head still tucked into his neck, and feels supremely out of his element.

He soothes Lance the best he can, though it seems to make little difference, hushing awkwardly and offering platitudes like _you’re okay_ and _just breathe_. 

“What’s going on?” he finally asks, in and amongst the consolations. “What’s wrong?”

That finally gets Lance to withdraw. He freezes for a second, like it's not setting in exactly what Keith's words mean, and then pushes back almost violently. He holds himself across the stomach with one arm, the other clenched at his mouth like he’s mortified; like Keith’s words are a tarantula dropped on the floor and Lance is _disgusted_ by them. His face is a mess of tight lines, eyes bright red and puffy with tears, lips open and trembling. “What’s wrong?” he repeats. “What’s _wrong_?”

From around the corner, Keith can hear more footsteps approaching at a run. He wonders if he’s missed a transmission. He looks dumbly at Lance, unsure whether or not to keep trying to comfort him.

“You really don’t get it…” Lance whispers, and somehow it sounds even more broken than the crying had.

Keith doesn’t have a chance to answer. Shiro rounds the corner at a run, Allura, Hunk, and Pidge hot on his heels, and he’s almost tackled again, sagging under the weight of the four paladins. They’re all talking at once, but he quickly gets the idea.

“What were you _thinking_?”

“I’m so glad you’re okay!”

“Don’t _ever_ do anything like that _ever_ again!”

“Oh my god. Keith, _oh my god_.”

It’s only then that he realizes the change in himself.

He sees it in his own vague confusion; in the odd lack of feeling where... _something_...should probably be (he doesn’t even know what. Guilt? Fear?). He feels a pronounced lethargy as his adrenaline wears off, and a vague relief that he made it through the mission, and a strong confusion at Lotor’s motives...but nothing he can draw on in response to this outpouring of dread. Nothing comparable to it.

“I’m...sorry?” Keith says as his former teammates release him, Shiro smiling in a way that seems inappropriate given his grave tone of voice moments earlier. “I didn’t mean to upset you guys.”

“You didn’t mean to…” Pidge trails off, eyes seeming to fill the entirety of the large, round space of her glasses. Abruptly, she punches him in the arm, hard enough to _actually_  hurt. He flinches back, grabbing at what will be a decent bruise, as she spits, “What were you even _thinking_?!”

The shame that prickles in Keith’s palms has become foreign to him. He hadn't been prepared to find himself _this_  unequipped to deal with Voltron and all their sensitivities. “It was the only way to save the mission,” he protests quietly.

“But it kind of wasn’t,” Hunk points out in that halting, somehow endearing way of his. “I mean, you didn’t have to go through with it in the end, so…”

Keith shrugs. “We didn’t know that flipping Lotor was an option. I did what I thought I had to do.”

Lance looks like he’s in real danger of passing out, straining away from Keith like he’s bubonic and contagious. None of the paladins seem to know how to respond to that, all of their faces stuck somewhere between surprise and horror.

Keith doesn’t know what to do; has nothing to offer to comfort them; doesn't even know if that's really a  _bad_ thing.

Allura says his name, and even though it shivers with tears, she still somehow manages to make it sound pretty; like a little melancholy tune on a glockenspiel, clear and heartbreaking. She reaches up and cradles his face in her hands, and though the unfamiliar contact makes him flinch, Keith stays put. Her fingers are impossibly warm, almost _vibrating_. If it weren’t for the markings on her face staying resolutely dark, Keith would be convinced of some kind of Altean energy magic. “You matter,” she says softly. The tears make her eyes insanely turquoise. “You _matter_ , Keith.”

Keith opens his mouth; closes it again. He _knows_ he matters.

(Right?)

He just…

“I know this is war, and there are sacrifices to be made,” Allura continues gently, “but your life is _precious_. You mustn’t offer it up so lightly. You matter more than this.” She pulls him into a fierce hug, and her whole body is warm like her hands, and Keith isn’t sure if her slight shaking means she’s crying again or not.

Over the top of her head, Keith watches as Shiro places a hesitant hand on her shoulder (and that’s still _wrong_ , somehow; still fundamentally _not what Shiro would do_ , despite the fact that he’s already done it). Pidge and Hunk stick together, leaning against one another, though Hunk must be doing most of the work in that equation. Lance looks at the ground, arms still wrapped around himself, looking vaguely sick.

Keith is at a total loss.

The understanding that he’s done something _serious_ dawns on him slowly, in a sort of oddly jerking anxiety, prodding at him in fits at starts. _Dead_ has become an idea that he’s stripped of all meaning with the Marmora. _Dead_ has become just something he or any of the Blades might be at the end of a mission.

Now, tapping Allura awkwardly on the back, watching all the different ways dismay can splay itself over his former team members’ faces, _dead_ starts to lose a little of the abstract quality he’d forced onto it. _Dead_ starts to take on feeling again.

It starts to feel like a petite alien spelling out in warm drops on his shoulder all the ways she cares about him, despite all the quirks in their relationship.

It starts to feel like leaving had, only sharper and less forgiving in its permanence.

It starts to feel like the sunken, yawning absence of _hey, Keith_ filling itself in with Lance’s mortified face.

He doesn’t know how to deal with it. He doesn’t even know if he should embrace this new _dead_ or denounce it in favour of the neutral one he’s instilled in himself. He’s no longer sure which one is safer.

He lets his arms fall; shifts uncomfortably. Allura gets it after he does it a second time, and backs off, pressing her palm one more time against his cheek before stepping back; before glancing worriedly at Lance and placing the same warm palm on his arm. It seems to jolt him back to himself, somewhat. He looks at her and blinks several times, and a little of the colour comes back to his face, and his expression softens just enough that when he looks back at Keith the brown imperfection in his eye has vanished beneath his eyelid.

_____________

Keith doesn’t _really_ panic until hours later.

It had been awkward leaving the docking bay, getting back to the business of the war and all that. He’d pulled each of them into a hug, promised them that he was _fine_ , promised he’d never do it again (wondered if that had been a lie), and then they’d had no choice but to face the more pressing issues at hand. He’d have to brief Kolivan, take stock, and ready himself for return to the nearest Marmora outpost for word of his next mission. And Voltron would have to deal with the giant curveball handcuffed in a cell somewhere the castle. Keith had secretly breathed a sigh of relief. What would his move had been, had he still been in black paladin armour when Lotor fired the cannon that had saved his life?

(Except, of course, it wouldn’t have saved his life. He’d have been in Voltron’s head; in _his own_ head, and the thought of sacrifice wouldn’t— _couldn't_ —have crossed his mind at all, and it would have been…

...better? Safer, at any rate. More helpless, though…

Even given the implications, he’s relieved to not have to think about it beyond the hypothetical.)

Hesitantly, they’d gone about it. Lance had grabbed his hand and _squeezed_ , and said quietly, “Don’t leave before we can talk.” He’d walked away before Keith could squeeze back;  _dead_ and it’s sudden static had flared momentarily before sinking to an ignorable volume, drowned out by post-battle minutiae.

Kolivan had been surprisingly _not_ okay with his decision. “You _what_?” he’d hissed— _actually_ hissed, the yellows of his Galra eyes flashing.

Keith had been taken completely aback. He’d expected Kolivan, of all people, to understand. “What do you mean I _what_?” he’d parroted, heedless of the insubordination in it. “There was no other option at the time. I did what I had to do to save the mission—what any Blade would have done if—”

Kolivan had made an odd noise, then: a gruff, choppy grunt, like he’d been starting to growl several times but couldn’t get it out. Then he’d dropped his head on the monitor so Keith couldn’t see his face and ground out bitterly, “You are...right.”

When he’d looked up again, after a long pause, he’d been calm, the tension around his eyes the only thing betraying the strain of whatever he’d been thinking. “I’m sorry,” he’d said. “There's someone—I’m just glad you’re alright, Keith.”

And then he’d gone on with business. 

Still, Keith had known his actions were bothering his commander— _really_ bothering him—when the man commanded him to remain where he was for _at least_ the night before setting off. When Keith had asked what he was supposed to do with the extra time, Kolivan had just grimaced and said, “Do whatever it takes to get some sleep,” and added almost sarcastically, “I wish you good luck.”

It had seemed over the top, at the time.

He’d grabbed a bite and a shower, no sign of the others, and no surprise there. They’d no doubt be preoccupied with their long-haired complication for a while. The silent castle'd had no effect on him. It had relaxed him, if anything.

After it all, by the time he’s crawling into his old bed, he’s convinced Kolivan had made that sour face for nothing. He falls asleep nearly as soon as his head hits the pillow, the grey static of _dead_ far too low a hum in his ears to distract from his exhaustion.

He does dream of _dead_ , but it doesn’t bother him. The cruiser is there almost as soon as he closes his eyes, looming over him, the only thing he can see; _impossibly_ big, this close up, a new, grisly version of _closer...closer..._

But he sleeps calmly, dreaming of slamming into the thing over and over again, and he feels _nothing_. He’s not afraid, not panicked, not _anything_ , because he’s pretty sure it would have been too fast to be anything but a split second of inertia. It would have been the slightest impression of his seatbelt pressing against his collarbone, is all; a pre-rush of sound; an encroaching explosion that he’d already have been deaf against by the time it hit.

When he wakes, it’s because he has to piss.

 _Dead_ ’s static is still pale and subdued. He doesn’t know if his heart is beating slow or fast; it’s normal enough that he pays it no mind. He has no idea what time it is, no idea how long he’s been asleep, but the castle is dark enough to suggest a late hour. He pisses without fanfare, not thinking about anything, not paying any particular attention to the dreams he’d had, just a little sleepy and missing the warmth of his covers. While he’s washing his hands, he idly tries to recall the shape of that little brown spot in Lance’s eye.

He pauses.

The spot in Lance’s eye is…

It’s…

Wait, it’s...

Oh, come the fuck _on, it’s_...

He keeps drying his hands even after they’re dry; even after they start to chafe; even after the towel is reduced to a damp ball in his hands and he’s just grinding it into his reddening skin.

He can’t remember what the stain looks like.

Not exactly, anyway. He remembers where it is—he _thinks_. But it’s kind of worrisome, because how can he be sure he’s remembering that correctly, if he can’t even remember...?

He could have been _dead_ , and never seen that little stain in Lance McClain’s eye ever again, and _he can’t fucking remember what it looks like._

 _Dead_ ’s static cranks to eleven; stabs at his eardrums with its hiss; suddenly means _a whole fucking lot._ But nothing he can fathom or enunciate. Suddenly, that little brown spot is _everything_. It’s everyone he’s ever met and everything he’s ever done and everything he’s ever thought, felt, hoped, and even though so much of it seems trivial in the grand scheme, it’s suddenly fucking _everything about him_ , and the threat of _dead_ blocks it out like an eclipse.

He panics exquisitely.

He doesn’t break down into heaving sobs that threaten to make him throw up his dinner. His vision doesn’t shrink to a pinhole. His heart does pick up the pace, but it doesn’t roar in his ears, doesn’t make him dizzy. His eyes don’t even well up.

Instead, he makes to leave the bathroom, but finds himself shaking too violently to work the keypad. Then he realizes that his whole body is quaking, knees locked tight so that he stumbles when he tries to take a step back. His teeth start to chatter. He blinks once; twice; rears back and punches the keypad. It lashes out at him with electricity, puts a nasty scratch on his middle knuckle, and leaves dangerous looking wiring exposed, shooting sparks.

He punches it again, uncaring as the zap he gets is greater, as more cuts bloom along his fingers. He does it again, and again; reaches into the hole he’s created and twines his fingers around the mass of wires and _pulls_ until the whole mess rips from the wall in his burnt and bloodied fist (still shaking, though he’s not sure if it’s with electricity or frenzy).

The door slides open, and he lurches into the hallway. He stands for a moment, looking both ways, eyes wide and vacant. “Hello?” he says quietly through a jaw that refuses to open properly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I need...hello?”

He staggers off in a random direction, struck dumb and confused. He’s clutching the remains of the keypad in his shaking fist so hard that he feels an errant bit of metal snip into his palm. “Hello?” he whispers every now and again, too soft to echo in the vacant halls.

He eventually finds himself in the cryo-chambers, looking out into empty space through an airlock, into a little empty corner of everything that’s ever been and ever will be. It occurs to him that the Galra cruiser had probably been smaller than the castle; he’s probably standing in other peoples’ _dead_ , the hulking white hull of the Altean ship the last thing seen by countless other soldiers.

He stares out the airlock, and trembles, and bleeds from one hand over a tangle of castle ship wires, and says pathetically, one last time, “ _Hello_?”

He’s not expecting an answer, but he gets one: “Keith?”

He turns his head to look, neck jerking almost unnaturally. His eyes are starting to water after being held so firmly open for so long, but it just makes them flutter, eyelids too tense to meet in the middle. The image must be striking; Lance breaks stride as Keith clocks him, recoiling a little, face pinching with concern. “Keith…?” he tries again, approaching slower, hands up like he’s coaxing a wild animal (which, to be fair, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…).

“ _Lance_ …!”

He lets go of the keypad mess, and most of it falls to the floor, though a few wires stay stubbournly tangled around his fingers. He grabs Lance’s face, compensating naturally for the way the red paladin tries to rear back, startled, and pulls at the sensitive skin below his eyes with his thumbs. Lance tries to wriggle free, but Keith holds fast, tight enough that it must hurt, digging his fingernails into dark flesh.

The little brown stain in Lance’s eye is shaped like a strawberry.

It’s oblong, wider at one end, and it’s just at the top left of his eye, straddling the line between bright white and ocean blue, clinging in between two darker blue streaks in the iris.

Keith is here, and the imperfection is just off where he’d remembered it being, and it’s shaped a like a little wonky berry; and he starts to _sob_ , deep and ugly and fucking _alive_ , as he throws his body and all its tremors against Lance and clutches at his back.

Lance doesn't hesitate, just wraps his arms around Keith in return. The touch makes the Blade shake harder, takes his legs out from under him so they’re forced to sink awkwardly to their knees, but the red paladin holds him secure enough and takes the brunt of the blow. “I don’t want to die,” Keith insists. “I’m _so fucking scared_ and I _don’t want to die_ , I…”

Lance starts speaking that pidgin language between English and Spanish again, seeping warm and moist into Keith’s hair. His hands start trekking up and down Keith’s back, his index fingers on either side of the spine, catching on vertebrae and climbing over them like speed bumps. He guides their bodies gently to the side together, pausing when he needs to, until they’re settled a little more comfortably: him on one hip with his legs splayed the other way, Keith tucked in a shivering ball against him. One hand moves to his hair, alternating between petting over top of it and carding through it; between pressing in the hot air of his comfort and spreading it down toward his neck.

After a while, Keith doesn’t come back to himself so much as he collapses into Lance, unfurling one tendon at a time. Lance shows why he’s so good with a sniper rifle: he’s unbreakably patient, waiting ages for opportune moments to loosen the knot that Keith has become. Every now and again, he moves one hand down to gently pry at an arm or test the tension in a leg. Most times he finds the limb still locked, but eventually he’s able to prise one arm free and massage it tenderly from shoulder to wrist until it relaxes against him. A while later, and he’s able to do the same for the other arm, then both legs in turn, until Keith finds himself completely limp, face itchy with dry tears, unable to bring himself to move. He suspects he only stops shaking because his body lacks the energy to keep going.

“Hey, buddy,” Lance murmurs, still directly into his hair, still pressing the words in with his fingers.

Keith sniffles. The sound is sharp and intricately disgusting in the quiet. “I’m—”

Lance cuts him off with a kiss to his head, as effective as if it were dropped on his lips. He keeps his face where it is, afterward, buried in Keith’s hair, breathing deep. “Don’t apologize,” he says, steady and low.

“But I—”

Another kiss, submerged in his hair. “Por favor no te disculpes.” Keith doesn’t understand what that means, but he gets the gist.

Carefully, he takes stock. _Dead_ has taken on a fuzzy quality, like it’s grown a layer of mould. It’s colonized inside him again, though it’s taken on a slightly sour, pervasive odour. It’s no longer the _just something he might be_ it was before he’d dive-bombed the cruiser, but it’s lost a bit of the freneticism of the last few hours.

Like most other things in his life at the moment, it leaves him with the distinct impression that he’s not done dealing with its bullshit, but he’ll scrape by somehow for now.

“Thank you,” Keith says. His voice rasps and bubbles with snot. The aching sting in his right hand is worsening by the minute. Lance smells like a dozen different toiletries, and it’s almost overpowering, but not quite.

“I mean, it’s…” Lance shifts a little so he’s no longer talking directly into Keith’s hair. The loss of heat sends a little shiver over his scalp where all that comfort had been. “Look, I don’t want you to have to go through any of this, but...this is kind of a relief, if I'm being honest." 

That's...not what Keith is expecting to hear. He has no idea what to say to it, so he says nothing. He’s not angry, per se, but Lance must take it that way, because he immediately starts to ramble nervously. “Oh man, that sounds weird. I don’t mean, like, I _wanted_ you to break down or anything...not that you’re _broken_. Mierda, qué estoy diciendo...?” He stops; takes a breath deep enough that it shifts Keith against his side. “It was horrible, knowing what you were doing, not being able to do anything to stop it...but it was almost worse afterward, because it was like you didn’t even _care_. You didn’t get what losing you would do to us...to _me..._ I know you’re going to go back to the Marmora, and I just need to know that you understand…”

Another palpable breath.

“I hate watching you go through this, but I’d rather help you deal with it than watch you _not care_ about your own sui—” He cuts himself off; leaves the word unsaid. Keith’s glad for it. _Dead_ still makes little sense to him; he’s not sure when he’ll be ready to deal with _dead due to_  (but it’s certainly not tonight).

The problem is, there are a lot of things Keith wants to say to Lance.

He wants to tell him that he’s not exactly sure how to reassure anyone, including himself, about his chances of survival when he’s directly on the other side of an attempted kamikaze attack—but that, god help him, he wants to try.

He wants to tell him that he’s scared about what his own healing process will look like once he’s back with the Marmora and _The Cause_ , away from Voltron’s softer approach.

He wants to tell him that this whole debacle has made it clear that both he and Lance have changed during their separation, and that it’s only going to get worse, and he’s terrified that the next time they see each other they’ll have grown into two people too different to be anything but "former colleagues."

But.

He’s fucking drained; awful with words even if he weren’t. The Blades have not done any favours for his social skills, and as with all things were Lance is concerned, Keith doesn’t even know how he feels in the first place, let alone how to express it. It’s too abstract; too intrinsic.

He doesn’t want to stay quiet too long, lest Lance take it as another sign of anger, but he has no words, and if he did, no energy to say them. So instead, he sluggishly pulls away, joints groaning, until he can look up into the other boy’s face.

There’s a macabre smudge over one cheek, a bloody smear from Keith’s hand, and it occurs to the Blade that he’s never been this close to Lance’s face without it being somehow agonized. It’s appropriate, probably, considering the advent of everything they are (and especially everything they’re not), but it’s still kind of fucked up. 

He kisses him easily, and Lance kisses him back like he’d been expecting it, and it’s not lost on either of them how fucking _scared_ it is. It’s a wet, muddled mess of everything they can’t say, but god help Keith, because he still likes it _so much_.

Lance is curiously quiet, afterward. He just picks up Keith’s injured hand and starts carefully pulling the few wires left free, whispering apologies when they snag, dried into the plasma seeping from burns. “You’ll need a pod for this,” he mumbles, but it’s not chastising, and he follows it up with a kiss to the knuckles, heedless of the blood there.

Keith hums absently in agreement. It hurts—like, _a lot_ , now that he’s thinking about it—but he likes watching the way Lance’s fingers play over his. He likes watching the concentrated wrinkle between his eyebrows appear and disappear as he does his best not to hurt the Blade. He kisses him there once when it appears, and it should be cute, embarrassing, endearing, but all it really ends up being is sad in its necessity. He _needs_ to do it, because it’s the only alternative they have to the things they both know aren’t going to be said.

He smiles a little wryly to himself, thinking that he's always assumed near-death experiences were supposed to make people seize the day afterward, not shy away from it. But his own experience has left him with less _carpe diem_ and more  _careful, now_. To be fair, neither he nor Lance have to talk out what's happening between them, bittersweet and convoluted as it is, and that's certainly an evolution, but Keith isn’t sure whether or not it's a good one. 


	6. s06e02, 04-07

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene extensions: Season 6, episodes 2, 4-7
> 
> Growing up doesn't necessarily mean growing closer all at once. Sometimes, these things have to happen in sequence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The comments have been so super sweet, I low key want to touch butts gently and lovingly with each and every one of you.

Traveling through the Quantum Abyss for two years on a space whale with his newly found Galra mom is complicated enough without reliving random sections of their lives the whole time.

Okay, okay, _some_ of it, he’ll admit, is helpful. If there’s one thing he and his mother have in common, it’s that they’re not particularly good at talking about their feelings, so it’s kind of a relief to let the visions do the hardest parts.

For instance, they save Keith the pain of recounting his father's death (though reliving it is a sore consolation prize). Krolia mourns him for days, withdrawn and sullen except to ask the odd quiet question about what little Keith can remember. It answers most of the questions he has about their relationship, and allays a fear that Keith hadn’t even really known he’d had: that on top of being half-alien, maybe he’d been conceived in something like hatred or curiosity. It’s a soft relief to know his parents had been in love when he was made.

His mom learns firsthand what foster care hell had looked like—sees one or two things Keith would rather _no one_ be privy to, thanks—and takes to apologizing so frequently and vehemently that Keith starts to really mean it when he says, “Krolia— _Mom_ —I forgive you.”

He sees her tense nights surrounded on all sides by enemies, letting a few tears slip free, murmuring his name and Galran prayers for his safety, and though it makes him feel a little guilty, it helps in a way to know that her leaving had been a kind of hell for her, too.

Of course, there are happy visions, too. Keith learns what Krolia had been like at his age: _scarily_ similar, blunt and fiery with a fierce loner streak, breaking rules and joining the Blades at first as a form of rebellion against _any_ authority.

Krolia sees his best days with Shiro, riding through the desert to find the perfect spot to watch the sun go down behind the dunes, talking for hours the way Keith just can’t _do_ with anyone else (hasn’t been able to do with _Shiro_ , even, since he’s come back). 

But the visions are random, and they’re in the abyss for _two years_ , so inevitably some incredibly awkward shit comes up.

Keith could have gone the rest of his life without having to relive his first attempt at a kiss with a boy. It had been someone he’d made friends with at the mall which, at the time, had totally blown his mind: _he_ had made an actual _friend,_ and the guy  _wanted_ to hang out with him. It hadn’t lasted long, though. Keith had _thought_ the lingering touches and fluttering heartbeats were mutual, but… He’d leaned in one day while the other boy was mid-laugh (because that boyish chuckle _might_ have been Stage Three in Keith’s Gay Panic) and been pushed back; told firmly that it was fine if he was, _like, gay, or whatever_ , but that he was barking up the wrong tree in the wrong forest in the wrong fucking national park.

It prompts a clumsy conversation in which Keith tries to explain human sexuality to Krolia as best he can (and, he guesses, come out to her at the same time?). Galra, apparently, don’t spare much thought for sexual preference. By the end of his inelegant summary, Krolia shrugs and says, “It's just like I used to tell your father, humans are so _strange_. I don’t know any Galra who’s really given any thought to whether or not they’re more interested in males or females. We simply find interest where we find it. Who cares if there’s a theme in genitalia?”

(It makes Keith snort with poorly stifled laughter, then get a little lonely, because it’s the kind of thing he’d like to share with Shiro, just to watch him burst out laughing with a _Keith!_ that’s only chastising out of expectation. Or he’d like to blink at Lance and intone evenly, “Dude, I’m not _gay_ , I just have phallic genital preferences,” and watch the way he’d laugh in that mouth-wide-open, head-thrown-back kind of way; the way he always had on the rare occasions when Keith had cracked a dirty joke.)

The few instances of visions of a _mature nature_ are left resolutely unacknowledged. In fact, usually they like to go for long walks after those. _Several day long_ walks, _alone_ , wherein they can wait out any potential follow-up glimpses.

Because, see, the thing is, the visions are random, but tend to cluster; one encounter, or a _type_ of encounter, tends to spawn several similar ones in a row.

Keith dreads it, but sees it coming a mile off: it’s unavoidable that, after a while, a Lance cluster hits.

It only takes a few visions before Krolia, smiling softly into the fire one night, asks who this boy is who’s taking up so much of their time lately. Keith blushes and says, “It’s...complicated,” and when his mother just hums, “We’ll see,” it makes him a little nervous, because he supposes they will.

And they do.

And it’s impeccable, meticulous (necessary, he’ll concede) torture. 

For a while, he’s consumed with the Lance of the Garrison, watching their younger selves butt heads until the familiar frustrated ache he’d felt back then creeps back into his gut at the barest thought of the Cuban.

Then it had been them right after their “bonding moment,” growing steadily closer, proving that _they are a good team._  

Then he’d been thrown into the awkwardness of his time straddling Voltron and the Marmora, juxtaposed haphazardly against the staunch hot-and-cold of their first few weeks in space. Allura features more prominently in those; after they watch Lance bequeath his bayard to her, Krolia pats him on the shoulder and sighs, “Ah. I see, now. _Complicated_.” 

Then it had been a cocktail of _roger that_ s and _thanks, Keith_ s and a dozen candied words and moments that Keith will insist until his dying breath had _not_ made him cry quietly into his wolf’s fur.

In the span of two years, they hate each other all over again, find common ground all over again, traverse the complex maze of _whatever they are_ all over again. It’s too much, just like it’s always been too much, but he has nowhere to run from it. There’s no Marmoran base that needs him, no team to lead taking up the last of his emotional energy; it’s just him and his mom and his wolf and seemingly _endless_ time to think about all the shit the universe has to show them.

It forces him to examine every vision in detail before putting it back in its place; really _look_ at himself and Lance to make out the shape of _whatever they are_.

Even after two years, he’s still not sure—still stands by _complicated_ —but he desperately wants to find Lance again and figure it out. _Properly_ , this time.

He should know, given all that time to think, that it won’t be that easy.

________________________________________________________________________

Lotor is…

Lotor is...a slimy...fuckin’...

Lance huffs, watching the Galra say something softly to Allura that makes her light up in the way she only does when she’s just had a brilliant new idea.

Lotor is a slimy fuckin’...day-old...oh, he doesn’t know, a slimy fuckin’ day-old, re-nuked corn dog...from, like, some backwoods, dirty-ass gas station, not even a 7-11.

With his _long hair_ and his _sharp eyes_ and his _lithe figure_ and his _long legs_ and…

Okay, he needs to stop, before he gives _himself_ a crush on Lotor. Wouldn’t _that_ be something? Like har-de-fuckin’- _har_ , it would be the perfect last piece in a why-would-you-even-try-with-these-aliens trifecta: an Altean princess, a half-Galra secret society member...why not add a Galra prince? And all of them teammates at that. It’d be perfectly ironic.

His mouth twists sourly. Were Keith here, he’d probably point out that he’s not using _ironic_ correctly. He remembers him doing it once in class at the Garrison, lazily drawling in that unaffected way that had made Lance desperately want to see him ruffled, “I don’t think you know what irony means.” 

The twist in his lips grows into something sadder when he remembers that, actually, he has no idea if Keith would point that out if he were here. He hasn’t seen Keith in months, and the last time had been…

Well. The memory of that last kiss still kind of makes him want to cry, so there’s that.

They’ve been in contact, of course; checking in, especially after the Kral Zera. But it’s hard to get a read on someone in fifteen minute team briefings. He seems to be doing _fine_ ; seems calmer and more focused. But Lance isn’t sure if that’s real, or if it’s just because he’s in his _brooding, all-business, bad-ass Blade_ mode. The last they’d heard from Kolivan, Keith had been sent on an incredibly sensitive mission. He hadn’t contacted the team before setting off, and they haven’t heard from him since.

And _okay_. Fine, Lance has to admit, Keith had _maybe_ had a point when he’d said that it would complicate things having Allura around.

He just...he can’t _help it_ , okay? He means it when he confides in the mice that she makes him want to be a _better person_ , as sappy as it is. She’s so _open_ ; everything about her is impressive because it’s unabashed and ego-less. She’s not _trying_ to be so beautiful, or smart, or brave—she just _is_.

She’s _easy_ to have feelings for.

Keith (and Lance tries hard not to feel bad about thinking this, because he’s pretty sure the Blade would be the first one to admit it about himself) is _anything but_ easy.

The weird thing is, he’d secretly held that difficulty close; considered it nothing short of precious. All their animosity, all their misunderstandings, all their endless differences...none of it had been enough to stop them catching feelings for each other. All the chaotic ways they’d been drawn together had won out over all the things that should have kept them apart, and it makes Lance feel something he’s not quite sure he can put words to. Allura makes him want to be a better person, someone _worthy_ of her affections...but Keith has always just made him want to be his best try at _Lance_.

But _caramba_ , the man had been right (as much as _that_ stings to admit). He’s kissed Keith exactly three times, and the circumstances have always been fucked up, and while it’s always been _intense..._ in the end, he’s not here.

And even when he _is_ here, he’s not here.

And Allura is.

He groans and drops his head onto his folded arms. That sounds _awful_. Keith had said, _What are you supposed to do, wait around for someone you dated for all of forty-five minutes?_ and Lance had _balked_. He remembers so clearly being offended that Keith thought he was the kind of guy who _wouldn’t wait_ , but here he is, finding himself more and more drawn to Allura simply because all her warmth and loveliness is close enough to touch. He’s actually _glad_ , in the end, that Keith hadn’t listened to him, because this could only be worse if he were mind-cheating on top of everything.

But come on, Lance is only human. He fights alongside her, spends every day with her, was _brought back from the brink of death by her_. He doesn’t think Keith would blame him when he starts thinking that maybe they’d already reached the apex of _Keith and Lance_ before he’d left for the Marmora; that maybe _Lance and Allura_ deserve a little more consideration.

Besides, Keith is off being his superstar samurai self, probably being mega-railed by some tall, handsome, muscular Blade...probably changing more and more by the day into someone who’d be completely uninterested in a simple boy from Cuba with nothing special to offer.

Not that he’s doing any better on that front with Allura. At least Keith is a hypothetical; he doesn’t have to _watch_ the guy do better. It’s a sharp, unrelenting sort of pain, having to watch Lotor be effortlessly better than him in every way; having to watch Allura fall for someone Lance knows he could never hold a candle to.

By the time Keith appears, sending a message from an Altean pod somehow, looking unnaturally larger and older, Lance is struggling to figure out how to get over _both_ of the teammates he’s gone and fallen for like a fool, but it feels markedly easier when he can’t even physically recognize the man on the screen.

________________________________________________________________________

There’s so much going on when Keith reunites with the team—with Lance—that he really doesn’t have time to deal with most of it right away.

To be fair, he’s spent the past two years with little more than the warped reflection in his Marmora blade as a mirror, so he’s not expecting Voltron to notice anything amiss until he has a chance to tell them about the freaky time fuckery of the Abyss. It’s not until Lance says to the others, “Does he look bigger to you guys? He’s bigger...right?” that Keith even remembers that, _oh, yeah,_ he’s probably grown a bit, huh?

Maybe a little more than a bit, if the expressions on the paladins’ faces are anything to go by as he steps out of the pod. He can’t remember exactly how much taller Lance had been than him, but he definitely remembers looking _up_ to find that strawberry-shaped stain, not straight on like he does now. It’s...actually kind of a lot to think about: the fact that he’s clearly been gone longer in comparison than he’d thought.

It’s all kind of a lot. Seeing the team, seeing Shiro, seeing Lance and his strawberry imperfection and his over-the-top expression as he suspiciously says, “Hold on, how do we know you’re the real Keith and not his bigger, cooler, grizzled older brother?” 

(Even _that’s_ a lot: Lance thinks he’s cooler; _grizzled_. He’s not even sure if that last one is a compliment. Is Lance _into_ grizzled?)

But he doesn’t have time for any of it, and he sternly tells Lance so. He pointedly ignores the sarcastically upbeat “Hey everybody, Keith’s back!” his cold demeanour draws from the red paladin, because that warm, joking tone makes him want to scoop the man up in his arms, and there are more important things to deal with right now.

He thinks there’ll be time enough for all their reunions and explanations after they deal with Lotor and the Altean colony. Later on, he'll realize there will have been more than a few things he’ll wish he’d have dealt with on the spot, but how could he have anticipated the absolute clusterfuck ahead of them at the time?

_____________

He’s not expecting Shiro to reveal himself as _actually not Shiro_ ; not expecting to pilot the black lion again for the first time in years and chase him through a wormhole; not expecting to speak to his dead spirit and then race back to the others for a life-or-death battle in a quintessence field.

Shiro’s _gone;_  and then he’s _back_ —really, actually back, _for real_. (Which is just... _holy shit_.)

And the castle is gone; the latest sacrifice for the greater good, and a serious hit that he’s pretty sure hasn’t really sunk in for any of them yet.

And they’re heading back to Earth: all of them, including his Galra mom, a cosmic wolf, and an actual Altean who isn’t Allura or Coran. 

By the time they’re readying the lions for take-off, Keith knows he’s not going to get a chance to speak with Lance—not the way they need to speak, anyway—any time soon. He can’t help but wonder if it’s a good thing. Lance looks at him like they’ve never met, smiling too wide and cracking joke after joke until they pile up around him like a fort. And Keith is just doing his best to remember how to be around _anyone_ again, after all that time with only Krolia for company.

A little time spent adjacent to each other again, recalibrating, is probably for the best.


	7. s07e04

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene fix/addition: Season 7, episode 4
> 
> It gets a little easier, even as it gets a lot harder. 
> 
> Good things come to those who wait, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How they gon’ set us up with that good “I voted for Keith, I think he’s the future” shit in verse one only to hit us in the bridge with, “I don’t want to be stuck here for an eternity with Lance.”
> 
> That is some buuuullshit, and I ain’t finna have it.

Garfle Warfle Snick is bloody ridiculous from the ground up, but it gives them the best opportunity they have before Earth to talk out their feelings, so Keith will take what he can get.

Traveling in the lions has meant that Keith’s had ample time to talk one-on-one with Shiro and Krolia, but almost none with the other paladins. They can chat as a group through the comms, but unless they want to play musical lions with Cosmo (which, for the record, he _still_ thinks is a dumb name), they’re stuck with their own specific passengers for private conversations.

He’s filled the paladins in on his time in the Abyss, caught up on what’s gone on with them, struck up a camaraderie that feels a little like the one they used to have—maybe even a little closer in its maturity—but he hasn’t spoken with Lance. Not in a way that _counts_.

So, squinting under uncomfortably hot studio lights, eardrums assaulted by canned laughter, Keith is more than a little surprised when Lance seems to use the moment for a rare bit of candidness.

Bob asks them to choose a team member to be set free, and Keith is _sure_ Lance is going to choose Allura. He’s not entirely unsure that Allura isn’t going to choose him in return, come to think of it. He hasn’t actually had enough time to watch the two interact to gauge their relationship status, and he’s not about to come right out and ask.

Allura chooses Pidge, which isn’t exactly a comfort. It’s probably the smartest choice, releasing the smartest paladin. It’s exactly what Allura would do: think about what would be best for the universe at large, regardless of her own personal feelings. She’s still so good it’s effervescent, and while he’s matured enough that it doesn’t prompt the flare-up of jealousy in Keith that it used to, it still makes him a little sad, because who could blame _anyone_ for falling for her?

Waiting for the other paladins to give their answers, he realizes he’s already mentally preparing himself for an extended time on the show, not actually expecting _anyone_ to choose him to leave. He hasn’t been back that long, and he’d been the loner to begin with—it makes sense when Hunk chooses Allura and Pidge chooses Hunk.

And then—

Well.

It’s only been a couple years, but Keith’s apparently forgotten how good Lance’s aim is.

_Fucking sharpshooter,_ he finds himself thinking for the first time in ages, almost nostalgic, as he’s hit right in the solar plexus with, “I voted for Keith.”

Keith looks over at him, but Lance doesn’t look back; looks sheepish as he explains, “He’s our leader, plus he’s half Galra, so I think he’s, like, the future.”

It carefully avoids anything that could be read into by the others...but it’s warm in tone, and hesitant in a way that shows it’s genuine, and it’s made even better when Lance follows it up with a quiet, “And he’s kind of unstoppable. He’s the most determined person I know, and...I dunno, I just think he’s pretty cool.”

Fucking hell, Keith has _two years_ on Lance, and he still blushes like a middle schooler because his crush thinks he’s “pretty cool.” And even though it hasn’t been _years_ for him, it’s clear that Lance has grown, too; the _ha, sike!_ Keith half-expects him to drop doesn’t come.

The black paladin manages to force most of the red from his face by the time Bob turn his attention to him. Lucky thing; he’s sure there would have been some sleazy witticism if he hadn’t. When he reveals his answer, the host is taken aback.

“Lance? Why Lance?” he asks, and Keith is a little peeved. He has a sarcastic ( _safe_ ) retort all ready to go— _I just don’t want to be stuck here for an eternity with Lance_ —but he lets it die on his tongue, because _yes, Lance_. Lance is a _perfectly valid choice_ , and he’s getting a little fed up with people drilling into the man’s head that he’s not. (Two years watching the Cuban in flashbacks, and Keith has come to realize just how scarily _little_ Lance thinks of himself, despite his usual bravado.)

“Lance is vivacious. He’s _bright_ , you know? Too bright to keep locked away,” Keith explains. “And he’s a sniper, so he’s patient. If there’s anyone who could find a way to get us out of this, it’s him. He cares too much to leave his friends behind.”

Lance looks at him with eyes wide enough to put the strawberry on full display. Keith smiles over at him, the barest quirk at the corners of his lips, and this eyes go even wider for just a second before he looks away entirely.

_____________

Afterward, when they’ve confirmed with each other that Garfle Warfle Snick really _has_ happened (or else they’ve had the mother of all shared delusions), Lance is quiet. The others talk about just what the _hell_ that was, explaining to Coran, Krolia, Romelle, and Shiro about the game show they’d played entirely between one moment and the next, but Lance doesn’t say much of anything. Even Keith finds himself talking more than the red paladin.

Finally, during a lull over the comms, he asks carefully, “Could I talk to you for a sec, Keith?” and apologizes to Krolia and Shiro as it’ll force them to be zapped momentarily into Red. Travel by cosmic wolf isn’t exactly comfortable.

They don’t mind, though. Krolia even gives Keith a lingering, knowing look as she buries her hand in Cosmo’s fur and flashes away. In the couple of seconds he has to himself before Lance inevitably takes up the space where his mother had been, Keith rubs absently at the scar running up the side of his jaw, still itching in its freshness. He realizes with a bit of a shock that he’s _nervous_. He’s bare minutes on the other side of being potentially locked away for eternity, and he’s more nervous now than he’d been under the stage lights.

He’s expecting _hey, Keith_ , or _what’s up, man_ , or something of the like when Lance zaps in. But the red paladin just stands there, scratching absently at Cosmo’s back where he’d held on for the trip, looking at Keith in a way he can’t quite decipher. It’s not unkind; just scrutinizing.

“Hi,” Keith says after a long moment, though it’s not awkward.

Lance’s brow furrows. “Hi,” he says.

Keith glances around the cockpit. “Did you need a sec to gather your thoughts, or, uh…?”

“Nope,” Lance answers.

Keith blinks; lets Lance continue to stare. “Alright,” he says.

Finally, Lance seems to deflate somewhat, sighing as his shoulders sag. “So you’re not faking it.”

Keith can’t help the breathless little laugh that escapes him. He’d almost forgotten how stupid _cute_ Lance could be, taking the long way around in all his considerations. He has no idea what it is he’s not faking, but he figures Lance will fill him in when he’s ready. “I...guess not?”

Lance’s hair has gotten longer. It covers his eyes when he lets his head loll forward. He lets out a heavy exhale blown through loose lips and a dropped jaw: _pooouuuuuugh-faaaaahhhhhh_. “Moldito samurai,” he mutters afterward. “Incluso cuando haces las cosas más fáciles, las hace más difíciles.”

“Yikes, it’s that bad, huh? What’s bothering you so much?”

Lance’s gaze snaps back to him, too narrow for the strawberry to show. “What do you mean, ‘that bad’?”

Cosmo, apparently unimpressed with the slowing movement of Lance’s hand, takes the opportunity to pad forward a couple steps and nudge the wetness of his nose against Keith’s arm, stretching somewhat comically to keep his body within Lance’s scritching range should he start up again. Keith laughs softly, rubbing his fingers against the wolf’s head, glad for the excuse to look away from Lance for a second; away from the confused intensity of his stare. “En español,” he clarifies simply, wrinkling his nose (but allowing it, anyway) when Cosmo starts licking happily at his palm. “When something’s really gotten under your skin, you switch to Spanish. Sometimes you just get an accent, but that happens more often, like when you’re tired or happy or—”

“ _Fuck_ , Keith.”

The black paladin looks back up. Lance has squeezed his eyes shut; brought his arms up and crossed them around his stomach. “Lance…?”

The blue eyes again; the strawberry. “How do you even _know_ that?”

Keith blinks. He feels like he’s said something terribly wrong, but he can’t figure out what. “I thought about it a lot, I guess.”

Lance makes that punched-out breath sound again: _pooouuuuuugh-faaaaahhhhhh._

“You know, when you first came back, I was sure this was going to be a lot easier.”

_This_. Keith doesn’t like the sound of _this_. There’s something too sad, too _whatever they are_ , in it. He delays its explanation; tries for a little extra time to force the disappointed tingles from his palms and swallow the ice cube in his clavicle. It hurts, but he’s had ample time to prepare. “You thought I’d be different?”

Lance seems to break a little at that, sighing harshly and gesturing in that desperate, flailing way of his. “No, that’s the whole problem. I thought you’d be _the same_. Or, like, _more_ the same, somehow.”

Keith feels his own eyebrows draw downward. “Uh,” he says, and remembers that, sometimes, the roundabout way Lance comes to his conclusions is _cute_ , yeah, but also _completely obtuse_.

“You came back all _tall_ and _rugged_ and shit, and I was _sure_ that you’d have just…just _closed off_ , or something. When you left, you were so...things in general were so...and then you popped up on a screen and you were...fuck, I _don’t know_ , okay? I just expected you to be Keith the Emo Kid 2.0, and instead you’re the _total fucking opposite_. You’re more patient, you’re calmer, you’re cooler...you have this whole new _vibe_ , and I…”

He lowers his wildly gesturing arms again.

“...I didn’t want to like it.”

Keith can relate; knows that feeling _far_ too well. But he doesn’t say so; just lets Lance talk. (It stings more and more, the longer the conversation goes on, but Keith is keenly aware that he’s had years to think about these things; that there’s nothing for it but to give Lance the chance to think through them, too.)

“You do, though.”

Lance looks at his feet. “I do, though.”

It sets off a line of shivering, silvery pleasure, writhing just inside his spine, light and sweet. Keith gives himself a moment to enjoy it, because it’s becoming more and more obvious what’s coming next. “But…” he prompts.

“But…” Lance sighs.

Keith watches his jaw work silently, like he’s chewing and tucking into his cheek a bunch of words he can’t bring himself to say. It hurts the black paladin ( _again_ ), but dully, like prodding at scar tissue; he imagines it must be worse for Lance, so he takes pity on him: “So are you and Allura together now, or…?”

It seems to make a few of the words in Lance’s jaw go skipping down his throat. He swallows hard. “No,” he answers, then adds quickly, “I mean, not _exactly_. It’s…”

Keith smiles wryly. “Complicated?”

“Keith–”

“It’s okay, Lance.”

He looks at Keith sharply, like he doesn’t believe it.

To be fair, Keith doesn’t realize it’s not a lie until it comes dancing out his lips, spherical and tasteless.

“ _Really._ We both knew this was a possibility.”

“I haven’t...asked her out, or anything. We haven’t even talked about it. I just…”

Keith buries his hands deeper into Cosmo’s fur; his fingers feel curiously cold, almost numb. But he does okay, all things considered. Takes the pain and, after so much experience, simply lets himself feel it (just a little; just around the edges to get the measure of it) and puts it away for later.

“You just _like_ her.” He smiles at the strawberry. “I can understand that.”

He clears his throat; holds the smile but redirects it. He’s not sure he can face the strawberry while he says the things he knows are fair but that _still fucking suck_ to verbalize. “I’m not blind—she’s a stunner from six feet away in the dark. And she’s my friend, too, Lance. I get how great she is. She’s been here, bonding with you, growing with you...it’d be unfair to blame you for getting closer to her when I’ve been gone for...how long was it your time, again?”

The mention of the time difference does something to Lance’s expression; twists it into something edging on guilty. “A few months,” he says quietly. “You...I didn’t even think...after _two years_ you...”

Keith takes a deep breath; answers the question he’s pretty sure Lance is trying to ask: “Yeah. Still.” He’s kind of starting to think _always_ , but he doesn’t say so. It feels like it might be cruel to tell the red paladin that bit when he’s already so upset.

“I…” Lance trails off uncertainly. Keith doesn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry if that’s weird...or if it _makes things_ weird. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything, but I have to be honest: I _like_ you. And I’m probably going to _keep on_ liking you, if the current trend is anything to go by.” He shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. “You’re under my skin, Sharpshooter.”

He pauses. He _has to_ pause; has to fix his smile and put it back in place, more reassuring and less resigned.

“But that doesn’t change the situation. Regardless of anything else I feel, I care about you, and I care about Allura. I’m not going to stand in the way of whatever might happen between you two...you could make each other really, really happy.”

“But you–”

“Will deal with it,” Keith finishes for him, firmly. “Having feelings and acting on them are two different things. As far as I’m concerned, as long as you’re pursuing Allura, I’m not pursuing you.”

Lance buries his face in his hands and lets out another _pooouuuuuugh-faaaaahhhhhh,_ muffled through his fingers. “I am a total piece of shit,” he intones. “And I don’t know why you’re being so nice about it.”

Keith actually laughs at that, a loud _HA_ that takes him by surprise and then a series of more controlled chuckles. “Yeah, because I’ve just been a _total saint_ to you in all this,” he says with an edge of sarcasm. “And you’re _not_ a piece of shit. Feelings in general are kind of shitty...but you’re not a bad person for having them.”

It doesn’t seem to help; doesn’t lift Lance’s head from his hands, anyway.

Keith sighs. “Look, if anything changes...if things don’t work out and there’s still something here...we can work it out, then. Who knows. But as things stand…” He takes a deep breath and hopes it’s silent enough that Lance can’t hear him readying himself with it. “You should ask her out. It would be good for you.”

That has Lance’s head lifting again, finally. He sighs, almost a little bitterly. “So that’s it? We just...carry on?”

“What, did you expect us to duke it out and never talk again or something?”

Lance glowers at him, though it’s rimmed with something soft. “I mean, _not no_.”

Keith laughs again, despite himself. “Okay, _fair_ ,” he concedes. “But I’m not ready to nuke our friendship over this.”

Lance’s expression melts. The strawberry makes another appearance. “Me, neither.”

Keith leans forward and scratches down Cosmo’s sides, ending with a solid three thumps against his ribs. _Pahf, pahf, pahf._ The wolf wags his tail hard enough that it knocks audibly against Lance’s thigh. “Good. It’s settled, then.”

“...that’s it?”

Keith nods. “That’s it.”

It doesn’t feel like that’s it, not to Keith, but he knows there’s nothing for it now but to take what comes. _For now_ , he amends in his head. _That’s it for now_.

Lance nods, too, after a while, slowly, but decisively. “Okay,” he says, then repeats with a little more confidence after a shoulder lifting breath, “Okay.”

“Good.”

Cosmo gives up on Lance’s half-hearted petting and instead opts to flop over in front of the black paladin, offering his stomach hopefully. Keith caves immediately, digging his fingers in and scrubbing back and forth along the bared blue fur. He remembers tucking himself in against that exact spot on the space whale, letting the fluff envelope his face and absorb his tears after watching yet another bittersweet scene with Shiro or, more often, Lance. He wonders if the wolf knows what it’s doing; if it had understood the visions and is comforting Keith now, knowing what he’s going through and offering belly rubs as a consolation.

“So I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Keith drawls, after the silence has loosened a little, “Something my mom said to me in the Abyss that I know you’d get a kick out of…”

He’d been right: Lance does throw his head back with surprised laughter when Keith intones drily about thematic genitalia. It makes a writhing warmth start up in his stomach, but it’s easier than he’d anticipated to ignore; to tamp down and focus on the platonic appreciation in his head, instead.

By the time Lance is holding onto Cosmo again, ready to be zapped back into Red, his smile has a little of its easiness back. Things aren’t _perfect_ , of course; there’s an underlying awkwardness that a scant hour can’t get rid of. But they smile at each other, and trade _Mullet_ and _Cargo Pilot_ back and forth, and even though it still _sucks_ in a lot of ways, Keith is relieved to be on ground that’s a little more stable after so much time spent teetering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise the "happy ending" tag will be accurate. 
> 
> PS I'm weirdly hype to fix "Launch Date" next chapter, because I have some muh-fuckin' things to SAY about a badass female POC main character being shoehorned into a SECOND romance (with the only other main character POC) in the last season. Nu-fuckin'-UH. Allura and Lance both deserve better, and I'm jonesing to give it to them.


	8. s08e01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scene fix/addition/reorder: Season 8, episode 1
> 
> The sun sets on two relationships in very different ways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always transcribe bits of scenes to work into this head canon, so I had to go back and watch the date in Launch Date numerous times to get the dialogue right. Hope this is worth the read for someone out there, cuz that shit was torture. ("Best thing that ever happened to me" my ASS, Lance, have some gotdam self-respect...)

Lance finds himself mortified during his dinner date with Allura and his family.

And not, like, the _good_ kind of mortified, like he usually is when his family ribs him; the kind where his humiliation burns low, warming him up until it turns into a kind of comfortable fondness. 

He’s _mortified_ mortified.

He’d spent the better part of the evening rehearsing which stories to tell Allura, and how to tell them, and where to pause and weave in questions about her. 

He’d spent an “unreasonable amount of time” (according to Veronica and Rachel, anyway, both pounding on the bathroom door) doing an extended skincare routine.

He’d tried on practically every combination of clothes he owned (and _still,_  upon awkwardly descending the stairs like his sisters on prom night, felt inadequate upon seeing Allura in her simple pink dress).

It had started off _alright_ , he guesses. His mom is endlessly sweet, and he’d even managed to land a joke that had made Allura laugh that tinkling series of melodic notes (which had been even more paralyzing coming from her softly painted mouth, perched on top of a body Lance didn’t know could _get_ more effortlessly elegant). Even the beginning of dinner had gone okay, if a little quiet between him and his date. He finds himself not knowing the right thing to say at any given moment and, determined not to ramble as he’s usually wont to do, saying far less than he usually does as a result.

But of _course_ his family starts in. 

They always do. 

He can’t even fault them for it—it’s to be expected. 

But the longer they go on, trading jabs and embarrassing stories, the more Lance becomes aware of the fact that Allura is _Altean royalty_. She’s practically _glowing_ , gracious and tender and devastatingly beautiful, and as Veronica finishes up about the time she’d pranked him with dirt and water substituted for chocolate milk, Lance feels like practically _nothing_. 

On his best day, he feels like he can’t hold a candle to Allura, that he needs to be a _better person_ for her. Sitting at the table, watching it be confirmed for her that he really is little more than a goofball from Cuba, watching the way she courteously laughs along even as she shoots apologetic glances at him, he feels the total embodiment of _not good enough._

“Lance has always been the baby of the family,” Marco says, teasing (and Lance could _strangle_ him). “It only took you coming to dinner to finally graduate him to the adult table.”

They all laugh, including Allura, and the gentle hand she places on his arm should be comforting, but all it does is highlight that she’s still being _so good_ about everything, like how can she _be_ this perfect?

“Speaking of dates,” Veronica drawls, “Maybe you could put in a good word for me with that long-haired friend of yours, hm?”

It takes a lot to keep in the groan that wants to come galloping out his mouth. He’d been doing so well not thinking about Keith. At the mention of him, Lance finds himself kind of craving his company (okay, more than _kind of_ ). He’s tempted to slip away and call him or something—despite how totally inappropriate that would be on, like, eight different levels—not because he’d know how to help or what to say, but because that smooth, amused tone would do wonders in making Lance feel a little less _small_.

And alright, there might be something a _little_ possessive in it when Lance incredulously confirms, “What? _Keith_?!” and goes about flailing his arms as he repeatedly insists, “ _Noooo_ nonononononono. No. Way. _No_.”

That has his sister looking suspiciously at him. “ _Okay_ , _okay_ ,” she says, hands up, “ _Geez_ , don’t get your panties in a twist. Is he, like, a total psycho or something?”

Lance crosses his arms, a weak attempt to mitigate his overzealousness. “ _No_ ,” he says, “There’s just no way I’m setting you up with _Keith_. It’s too weird. Besides, you’re not exactly his type.”

Veronica rolls her eyes good-naturedly. “Can’t handle strong women?”

“Can’t handle women at all, actually.”

His sister’s eyebrows shoot upward. “Really? Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed.” 

“He...what?” Allura looks confusedly between Veronica and Lance. “But Keith and I get along.”

That has Veronica barking a laugh. “No, I think he means your friend is gay.”

Allura blinks. “I...suppose he’s not quite so sullen as he was, but I wouldn’t call Keith _gay_.”

“Oh my _god_ …!” His sister loses it at that, devolving into surprised laughter that Lance is torn between joining and elbowing her in the arm to stop, afraid it’ll insult his date.

She seems to take it in stride, though, simply looking at Lance with a curious expression, turquoise eyes belying mirth and not annoyance. It’s like a physical force, her gaze; it knocks the ability to think clearly from him. Before he can really think it through, he’s saying, “It means his genital preferences are phallically themed.” 

A palpable pause takes hold of the table. Even Veronica’s laughter stops. Then she doubles down; is joined heartily by Marco, Luis, and Lisa. Lance reddens. Allura still looks confused, though it’s with a little amused smile pulling at her lips. 

“It means,” Veronica finally says through her laughter, “that he’s homosexual. Only interested in men, is all. Jesús, Lance, where did you get _that_ from?”

He shrugs as coolly as he can with his face still burning. “Keith said it, once.”

His sister snaps her fingers as the amusement finally dies down. “ _Damn_ , so he’s funny, too! Why are all the good ones gay or taken?”

To maintain a modicum of sanity, Lance doesn’t allow himself to think too hard about that. 

He’s hoping Veronica is going to redeem herself when she stands to give a toast, having pulled the short straw before dinner. She’s doing well, he thinks, toasting to family and love. 

Until he looks over and sees the forlorn look in Allura’s eyes.

He looks at his half-eaten plate; considers calling the whole thing quits until he realizes that perhaps the only way to completely ruin Allura’s evening would be to ditch her on a first date.

_____________

He’s not going to lie, he’s surprised when Allura places a hand on his shoulder after dinner and asks if he’d like to take a walk. 

He’s even more surprised when it’s...okay. 

They make small talk for a while. It’s a little easier without his whole family around, though he still finds himself a little lost for words. He’s not really paying any mind to where they’re going, just keeps half-track of where they are in relation to home and focuses more on the conversation. When they reach a series of gnarled, dead trees, it takes him a moment to recognize the park he’d spent so much time in as a kid, staying out past curfew to look at the stars, promising each and every one of them that he’d visit someday. “This place used to be so beautiful,” he says absently. 

“It’s all my fault the Galra did this to your home.” Allura looks as though she can see the ghosts of all the families who’d been killed frolicking through the blackened grass. 

“No, it’s not your fault,” Lance insists. He hates watching her pretty features morph into something so sad. “Besides, meeting you is the best thing that ever happened to me.”

His declaration makes an odd expression come over her face, like a shade has been drawn. Instead of saying anything, though, she simply turns and places one dark hand against the nearest lifeless trunk. If he’s being honest, Lance isn’t really surprised, per se, when she brings the tree back to life. After all, he'd seen her transplant Shiro’s consciousness from a sentient lion robot into a clone body; tree resurrection actually ranks pretty low in terms of the miracles he’s watched her work. 

But even so, watching it happen, watching the blue light snake along the intricate patterns in the bark, up the trunk and along each branch, splitting endlessly until the whole thing is glowing, then bursting into dizzying green life...

It’s breathtaking.

Until he takes a closer look at her face, and sees the sadness still etched there. 

“When we were out there, fighting against the Galra, I somehow felt like we were a family," she says, quiet and reserved. "Each of us was alone, but we were alone together. But now, here on Earth, I see that everyone already has a family, and a home to return to once the war is over. Everyone except me. And for the first time, I feel uncertain about what my future holds. It’s silly...I used to think that the team relied on me, that I needed to be strong for everyone else. But now I see, it was I who needed all of you.” 

Her breath is a little shaky as she looks back at him. “You are my strength.”

Then she’s just looking at him—scrutinizing, almost—backlit by moonlight and Altean magic, all warm and open and soft. And it strikes Lance that if there were ever a perfect moment to kiss Allura (or, considering the light and the canopy and all, a perfect moment to kiss _anyone_ ), this is it.

So, naturally, he _totally freaks out_ internally.

He wonders if the quick tooth brushing he’d done in the bathroom before they’d left was adequate. 

He wonders if Alteans even kiss the same as humans. (What if they, like, touch ears or something?)

He almost backs out a hundred times in the span of four seconds, convinced she’s going to push him away in disgust. 

But he doesn’t. 

He leans in.

So does she.

And–

They kiss.

And it’s..

…

...fine.

All first kisses are a little awkward, though. He figures he’s come this far (in for a penny, and whatever the rest of the saying is), so he pushes a little further, holds a little longer, tries to find a rhythm with her as he holds her around the waist and she wraps her arms around his shoulders as if she’s _determined_.

It’s...getting there, he thinks.

Maybe?

Surely…

He means...it _must_ be, right?

Like, there’s a rhythm. It exists, at least. And they’re both objectively pretty good at this; they’re not, like, flailing against each other or drooling down their chins. It’s just that it’s…

...fine.

Okay, okay, okay, to be honest, he spends more time worrying about what his own lips are doing than focusing on the feel of hers.

And it’s a little stiff, like they’re playing musical harmonies a half-step out of tune.

And fuckin’... _okay_. He has to admit it: by the time they’re pulling apart, there’s just something distinctly _weird_ in it.

Of all the adjectives he’s thought of over the years to describe what kissing Allura might be like in the end, _weird_ has never been one of them. And all the words he _had_ thought of—hyphenated words like _life-altering_ and _earth-shattering_ and _mind-blowing_ —are specifically, unignorably absent.

He can see in Allura’s face that she’s not exactly jonesing for another go, either, ducking her head subtly to the right when it seems like Lance might try again.

All at once, the clumsy _something_ that’s been undercutting the whole evening comes to the forefront, and Lance is almost glad; he feels the least nervous he has all night. 

He’s actually _under_ whelmed for the first time since Allura stepped in the front door. (Perhaps, even, for the first time since meeting her.)

“So that was…” Lance murmurs.

There’s a silence just long enough to make his palms itch as they extricate themselves from each other, stepping back a little, neither really seeming to know what distance is proper, now. 

“...odd?” Allura finishes, finally, and even though it’s probably not the best feedback to receive on a first kiss, it’s a strange sort of relief for Lance. Somehow it makes his shoulders relax in a heavy sigh, knowing she’d felt it, too.

“Right? I’m sorry, I swear I’m usually...”

Allura reaches up quickly; places one warm, sender finger over his lips. “Lance, can I ask you an honest question?”

He nods. Her finger is thrumming. He wonders if it’s leftover from her earlier magic work. It instills in him the usual sense of awe, but gone is the urge for _more_ that usually follows. 

“What do you see when you look at me?”

His lips still buzz where her finger was when she takes it back. He licks them, but it’s mostly out of curiosity, wondering if magic has a taste. “I see...a beautiful woman?”

“No, I mean who do you see me as?”

He’s not sure he gets exactly what she means. “You’re an Altean princess. You’re a paladin of Voltron. You’re the sweetest...the kindest...like kind of insanely, just, _good_ …”

He’s pretty sure he’s misunderstood her when his answer just makes her deflate a little, looking away. But then she says, “That’s what I thought you might say,” and he wonders how _sweetest_ and _kindest_ and _good_ can pull her lips downward like that. 

“Is that bad?”

Allura looks at her hands. “No,” she says, “Not...not really...”

When she looks back up, it’s with untainted torment, and while Lance feels bad that she’s so clearly struggling to say something (something he’s starting to think is going to _really_ hurt) he actually kind of wants to laugh, because _girl, same_. 

“I don’t know how to _be_ around you, sometimes, because I feel like you’re pining over the idea of a person who doesn’t exist.”

Lance feels his eyebrows draw together, mouth opening instinctively, but Allura cuts him off with a gentle, “Please, let me finish?” so he just nods; schools his features so that she knows he’s really listening to her (even though—yup—it definitely bites).

She takes a moment, turning a little away from him to gaze up at the stars through the canopy. She really is insanely beautiful to look at, like a statue brought to life (and somehow, just as untouchable).

“I strive to be many things. You’re not wrong, I _am_ a princess of Altea. There are certain expectations to be upheld...I _must_ strive to be diplomatic, and fair, and just, because they are the things my father taught me to be in order to lead. But,” she looks at him with a certain ferocity; an intensification in feeling that Lance can’t quite place, “They are not _who I am_.” 

_Who Allura is_. 

Lance finds himself thinking of the first time he’d seen her, propped in suspended animation, falling as if in slow motion into his outstretched arms. He can’t remember for the life of him what the tone of her voice had been as she’d changed his life in just a few words, but he knows it must be the same one that still makes him feel insignificant.

It’s not, he realizes, _who Allura is_ , and as he tries to strip it away from her, he finds it impossible; what’s left underneath in his mind is flimsy at best, and mostly translucent. 

“It’s...nice to be admired. I can’t deny that, selfish as it is. But I want...I _need_...more than admiration. I’m more than _inspiration_. I can’t be _Princess Allura_ all the time. If I’m going to be with someone, I need them to see me as _me_. As _Allura_. I’m not a means or a reason.”

Lance makes to nod, but stops himself because it would insinuate that he understands, and he doesn’t. Not entirely. It’s too much all at once, especially juxtaposed against the unexpectedness of the entire evening. “I know you’re more than that,” he says, but it lacks conviction, a _...don’t I?_ remaining loudly unsaid.

“It doesn’t feel as though you do,” Allura says, flinching a little as if the truth in the words burns her tongue. “Not all the time. Whenever things turn romantic, it’s like I stop being a person to you and become an _ideal_. And it’s too much pressure...I can’t be a paradigm. I need time to be an individual. Especially after Lotor…”

This time it’s Lance who flinches; it’s a comparison he’s not at all ready for, because Allura’s words are just starting to hit him as true. It’s a sluggish, stubbourn realization he instinctively resists until it becomes impossible to: this thing between them is all-around _less_ than the importance and insistence and time he’s afforded it. 

It’s not predetermined, not written in the stars, not an unavoidable head-on collision. 

It’s a _crush_. 

“But…” he starts, but doesn’t know what to say.

“And that’s not even taking into account the logistics.”

Lance wonders how many extra wrinkles trying to date his fellow paladins is going to give him, in the end. “Logistics…?”

“I can’t deny that I feel something for you Lance. Enough of something that I’ve willfully ignored the obvious problem between us: I’m an Altean. You’re a human.” She looks sadly at him. “I will live for hundreds of years. You will not.”

And _god_ , the worst part about the whole conversation is that Lance _wants_ to argue. He wants to insist that he _does_ know her; that they can enjoy whatever time they have together, regardless of lifespan; that they can figure out a way to make it work. But the more painfully valid points Allura makes, the more Lance realizes the harshest truth: whatever it is that’s been brewing between them, it’s simply not strong enough to motivate either of them to even attempt to surmount the seemingly insurmountable.

An image of himself at 90 pops unbidden into his head, onion paper skin dripping off his face and that pervasive old man smell wafting off him, surrounded by kids and grandkids and maybe a few great-grands. And Allura, looking younger than two generations by a decade, smiling tiredly but determinedly as she wipes the spittle from his chin and waits for him to die.

It makes him vaguely nauseous.

It doesn’t even feel a little bit worth it.

(Without really thinking about it, he half wonders if Keith’s lifespan will be affected by his Galra DNA; if he’ll outlive them all, too.)

(It makes him nauseous in an entirely different way.)

(It feels way, way too worth it.)

(He has to stop.)

(He tells himself: one heartbreak at a time.)

The breath he lets out flutters.

“This isn’t going to work, is it?” 

Lance doesn’t expect an answer, and doesn’t get one.

“All this time, and it doesn’t work in, like, _so many_ ways.” He can’t help it; a little bitter laughter makes its way up his throat before he can stop it. He’s legitimately surprised to hear its mirror from Allura, her pretty voice taking on a surprising sharpness.

“I do have feelings for you, Lance,” she says afterward, none of the acidity of her laugh in it.

“But there’s a difference between having feelings and acting on them,” he murmurs, exactly the way Keith had said it to him, but stops the thought before it can go any further. 

One at a time; one at a time.

When he meets Allura’s eyes again, there’s a resignation there that he can feel reflected in his own face. He tries to smile at her, but doesn’t think it’s so much a smile as a grimace. “For what it’s worth, I really do like you, Allura. I wanted this to work.”

Her lip trembles in a way that belies the dryness of her eyes. “Me, too,” she says.

Silence, then, but somehow not nearly as awkward as it has been the rest of the evening; more grudgingly accepting than anything. Finally, Allura steps in close and reaches up to press her lips against his cheek. “I still love you dearly,” she whispers, words warm against his jaw. “You will always be one of my best friends. _Family_.”

Lance can only nod; kiss her firmly on the temple and look just a little to the left, so his eyes land somewhere around her ear as they pull away. “Ditto,” he says, which he knows has far less gravitas than the situation calls for, but is the only thing he can muster.

It’s a quiet walk back to his family’s place.

They bid each other goodbye with a hug that’s only a little hesitant (not too bad, he thinks), and she’s whisked away in a car back to the Garrison. 

His siblings are still up when he gets inside, gathered around the TV, half of them dozing. Veronica starts to rib him, asks slyly if he needs a little chapstick, but something in his face must tell her that he’s not in the mood, because she pipes down almost immediately.

He takes a hot shower, complete with full face routine.

He puts on his softest pajamas.

He locks his bedroom door and puts in a set of earbuds.

He thinks carefully about his date with Allura and everything she’d said.

He gives up on _one at a time_ ; lets thoughts of Keith intrude where they will.

For an undetermined number of hours, he cries.

________________________________________________________________________

Keith doesn’t blame Hunk for it, but it still fucking _sucks_ when the yellow paladin idly drops into the conversation the fact that Lance is taking Allura to meet his family. As a  _date_.

“Can you even believe it? After all this time?”

He doesn’t particularly want to, but yeah, he can definitely believe it. 

Keith just smiles and offers a somewhat sarcastic, “I can’t believe she said _yes_. Was she drunk?” because he knows it’s expected enough not to draw attention.

He waits a few minutes before casually remarking that he’s feeling a bit cooped up and might take a trip out to the desert. “For old time’s sake,” he assures Shiro with a smile that must not look as forced as it feels, “We don’t have that much more time on Earth. I just want to feel the dry air again.”

He makes for Black with a hastily packed bag that afternoon; makes sure he’s miles away from anyone but Cosmo by sundown. 

For four days, he stares out over the dunes, or trains as best he can in Black’s cool confines, or races over the sand with his wolf until they have to trudge back to the shade, exhausted.

He doesn’t think about Lance.

Frankly, after so many years, he can’t think of anything else _to_ think about him. He _feels_ all sorts of things, but he doesn’t _think_ about them; just waits for the emotions to fade enough that he’ll be able to face the red and blue paladins without making an ass of himself (or worse, hurting either one of them).

On the fifth day, though, thoughts of Lance come barging back in. All sorts of new thoughts; thoughts that, even after all this time, catch Keith off guard, because he’s never had the opportunity to think them.

Because on the fifth day, as Keith sits on the hot metal of Black’s head with Cosmo splayed out beside him, watching one of the last Earthly sunsets he’s likely to see paint itself over the sand, Lance comes trudging up behind him with a deceptively easygoing, “Man, you can be a real hard guy to find when you want to be.”

At first, Keith doesn’t want to look at him; is _afraid_ to. He’s terrified of the beat his heart is likely to skip. So he tries to keep his face neutral and only glances over as he greets the red paladin with, “Hey, Lance.”

Lance, however, makes his life easier, for once. Upon seeing what the man is wearing, Keith’s face goes slack with shock, eyes wide. “ _Whoa._ What are you wearing?”

It’s actually kind of hard to take in Lance’s outfit all at once. Between the ladles at his belt, the pots and pans strapped to his shoulders and head, the wrappings that must be incredibly uncomfortable around his knees like that, the cape...

...the _bratwurst around his neck_ …

Keith takes real pride in the fact that he manages not to laugh. (He decides that he shouldn’t after he clocks Lance’s face, drawn and clearly upset.)

Lance sighs. “Coran made it for me. He thinks I should try again with Allura.”

_Try again_ is a decidedly odd combination of words to send such a jolt through Keith, but _fuck_ , does it ever.

“Try again…?” he prompts.

“Yeah, he’s pretty determined. But I can’t keep all these Altean customs straight.”

It’s not an answer, and that’s not lost on Keith, but he doesn’t prod. Not yet. 

“Listen, if she’s going out with you, it means she likes you,” he says, then smirks and adds with as much lighthearted sarcasm as he can manage, “The annoying, stupid, Earth version of you.”

The noise Lance makes is decidedly not one of agreement, but Keith can’t quite place what it’s trying to get across. Anyway, he laughs a little afterward, so at least there are no hard feelings about the jab. “Watching the sunset?” the red paladin asks instead of retorting.

Keith goes along with the subject change, abrupt as it is. It gives him an excuse to stop looking at Lance, anyway; stop watching the way the fading light plays over his face and makes him look so goddamn _pretty_. “Yeah. Might be awhile before we get to see it again.”

“I’m really going to miss this place.” 

Afterward, Keith won’t really understand what prompts him to say what he says next. Something about the wistfulness in Lance’s voice, or the day’s beautiful death throes turning the desert into an oil painting, or the pinched way the red paladin is clearly avoiding _something_. “That’s why we’ve got to end this war,” he says, and tries not to put any particular inflection on it at all. Tries to just be genuine, so that Lance knows he’s not being facetious or pitying. “And we’re going to do it with the Lance that’s the paladin of the red lion. The Lance that’s always got my back. And the Lance who knows exactly who he is, and what he’s got to offer.” 

It gets him for a second. Lance smiles over (and, yep, there it is; the beat Keith’s heart skips must be important, because it fucking _hurts_ to miss it), but then the smile fades. 

“I’m not so sure about that,” he says quietly. “The whole who I am and what I have to offer thing.” His laughter, this time, is a little rueful.

Keith bites at his cheek; decides to prod gently: “What happened?”

Lance looks back out over the dunes. They’re rapidly losing the light.

“It didn’t work out.”

Keith opens his mouth; works his tongue soundlessly; says simply, “Oh?”

Lance gives a one-shouldered shrug, and it clangs with the pans strapped there. “Yeah. We decided on our very first date. It just…” he seems to consider his words very carefully (especially for him), “It just wasn’t right, in a lot of ways.”

Keith’s never been the prying type. He’s always been so insular and private himself that he’s erred on the side of not intruding. _Especially_ with an omission as blatant as this one. But _god_ , he’s never wanted to badly to ask for all the nitty gritty details of someone else’s personal problems.

Instead, he nods slowly. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say (except for, _but what happened though?!_ ).

Lance snorts. “You and the whole world,” he mutters. “Hunk’s bad enough trying to get us to try again, but Coran is _relentless_. He’s convinced I just need to follow some Altean mating ritual or something. It’s driving me nuts.”

He jolts, then; sits up straight and looks sheepishly over at Keith. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t complain about this to you. It’s, like, _massively_ unfair.”

Keith quirks one side of his mouth in a quick, resigned smile. He can’t argue, but he doesn’t want Lance to feel too bad, either. He means what he said after Garfle Warfle Snick: he still cares; still wants to be there for his friend. “S’okay,” he says. “There’s a difference between–" 

“–having feelings and acting on them?” That rueful laugh again, somehow more bitter on the tail end of Lance’s interjection. “Yeah, that’s what I told her.”

Hope and sympathy feel incredibly odd, juxtaposed against each other in Keith’s chest like this.

He stays silent. 

Lance pulls irritably at various bits hanging off him, pots and ladles clattering into a pile beside him. “The problem is I’ve spent so much time convincing everyone, myself included, that it was, like, _inevitable_ , or something, and now they _believe it_. They don’t want me to ‘give up,’ or whatever, but…”

One last metal hook goes clanking into the pot that had, before, been perched on his head.

“...but I don’t _want_ to try again. It was just _so weird_ , dude. _So weird_.” He seems to deflate somewhat, draping one arm over a propped up knee and letting the other splay out to the side, leaning heavily on it. “When I kissed her I was expecting _fireworks_ , and it was like...wet sparklers. It wasn’t _real_.” 

He looks over. The strawberry makes its first appearance of the evening. ( _Fucking ow_ , there goes another beat of Keith’s heart, lost to the ether.)

“How can I know what I have to offer when I can’t even tell what’s _real_ , you know?”

Keith doesn’t know. He’s not sure what Lance means by _real_. It had seemed real enough to Keith, from the outside—real enough to stop _whatever they were_ in its tracks, anyway—but he imagines that might be part of the problem.

He’s suddenly reminded of the bridge on the castle ship. He remembers Lance’s ridiculous lion robe, and the _shht-shht_ of it against his arm, and the desperation in it as Lance had held his face for the first time and tried to impress upon him all the ways he was good enough. Without thinking, he says, “I can tell you what you have to offer.”

Lance blinks at him. Keith chooses to believe, for the wellbeing of his poor heart, that the redness he spots on the other paladin’s cheeks is just the dying light. Everything in him wants to stop talking, to backtrack, because he’s still _not good at this_. But he’s done that so much with Lance over the years, and he’s got that lost look again, so Keith is determined, this time, to at least _try_ to make him feel better, even at the cost of his own comfort. 

He keeps talking.

“You’re funny. You’re charming—well, _sometimes_ , anyway. You’d give anything for your friends and family. You’re good with people. You’re easygoing, but you get really serious about the things you’re passionate about. You’re...handsome…” He can _feel_ his face heating up; prays that Lance is as merciful as he was and will assume it’s just the sun. “Your eyes are insanely blue, and you have this one little spot in one of them that I can only see sometimes, when I’m lucky…” Like right now. The strawberry is on full display. It’s distracting, but Keith soldiers on. “I don’t know exactly what you mean when you say ‘real,’ and I don’t know what happened between you and Allura, but...if it’s any consolation, you knew way before I did what was real for us. You should trust yourself more. You weren’t wrong. It _was_ real.”

Yet again, he can’t place Lance’s expression. “Was?” he asks in a curiously small voice. 

Keith licks his lips; can’t help but notice when Lance does the same.

“...is?”

He’s not sure if it’s a question; even if it is, he’s not sure which of them he’s asking.

Oh god, it’s been literal _years_ since _closer, closer…_ but here it is again, just as intoxicating.

It takes more determination than he’d like to admit for Keith to stop himself from just letting the kiss happen.

Softly as he can, he presses his palms against Lance’s shoulders to stop his advancement. “As much as this appeals to me,” he murmurs, looking down. “I would really like to know what it’s like without one or both of us being distraught first, so…”

Lance exhales. “Point taken.”

Keith bites his lip. He doesn’t say it, but the word _rebound_ does traipse momentarily through his head.

“I’d also like to know what it is we’re trying to accomplish here…”

He cringes at himself. _Romantic_ , he thinks. Even Kolivan could do better than _what we’re trying to accomplish here_ , like it’s a mission briefing.

Lance doesn’t seem to mind, though; just nods. “Point _doubly_ taken.”

They fall into an awkward silence.

The last of the sunlight fades behind the dunes, leaving a cool purple twilight in its wake.

Lance cracks first, with a heavy sigh. 

“Look, I know this whole Allura thing just happened. And I know it was the whole reason you and I never tried anything after you got back. But it’s like...when I was with Allura, I...damn, esto me va a hacer sonar como un gilipollas…”

Keith smirks, though it’s tense. “That bad, huh?”

That has Lance looking at him intensely. It has the strawberry back full stop, white on all sides. “Yeah,” he says, like it’s a realization. “Es tan malo.” It’s almost like Lance has never seen his face before. It makes Keith a little self conscious, the way he’s being studied so closely. Lance doesn’t even seem to _blink_. “I kept thinking about you. I tried not to, but it’s like every time something felt _wrong_ with her _,_ it was something that always felt _right_ with you. Or if not right, at least...earned. Or something. Jesús, I’m sorry, I know it makes me sound like a dick, but I should have been thinking about Allura these last few days—and I did, and it still hurt—but mostly, all I could think about was _you_.”

There’s a certain unexpected inflection on the _you_ ; it’s almost angry. Keith makes to respond, but Lance keeps going, like some unknown floodgates have opened. 

“ _You_ and everything I feel with you, which is everything I didn’t feel with her, _including_ the fact that you drive me insane. _You_ , and the way you’re so stupid good at _everything_ , and the way you have the worst people skills, and the way you’re always so complicated...and the way I love figuring you out, and the way every little bit I get from you is like a fucking _prize_ , and the way that kissing you isn’t like wet sparklers, and it’s not even like fireworks, it’s…”

Keith finally thinks he might get it. “It’s real?”

Lance’s intense stare doesn’t waver as he nods. “Everything about us is so much more real than anything else ever has been.”

For a second, Keith feels a little bitter about Lance’s having to look elsewhere to confirm that, but Regris peeks his head out of the darkness of the back of his mind, and the irritation snuffs itself out. He reminds himself that he’s the last one to fault anyone else for taking, objectively, _forever_ to figure out their emotions. 

“Sometimes I want to kiss you so badly it makes me want to punch you in the face,” he admits. Far less eloquent than Lance, but the surprised little laugh he gets makes Keith feel okay about it, anyway. 

“God, _right?_ ”

The urge to avert his gaze is strong, but Keith forces himself to keep looking at Lance; at the strawberry. “I don’t want to rush this,” he starts; is cut off by Lance’s amused snort. 

“What part of this has been _quick_ for you?”

Keith nudges at him with one shoulder, but it’s teasing. “You know what I mean. It’s only been a few days since your date with Allura. Don’t you want some time…?”

Distantly, but clearly, Keith realizes that he’s been prepared for every eventuality but this one; that he’s trying to search out what the catch will be this time. After everything, he finds himself curiously _not ready_ to deal with him and Lance becoming an actual thing. Not a _that one time_ or a _whatever they are_.

A _thing_.

(Internally, he balks at his own very Lance-like choice in words. _Real_ , indeed.) 

“We’ve been taking our time for _years_ ,” Lance says, “How much more of it can we afford to waste? That was the whole reason I went out with Allura in the first place. Now or never, you know?”

_Now or never._

It’s surprisingly stressful in the moment. Keith would have expected a little more _relief_ , a little less _mind-numbing nervousness._

“So you really want to do this?” he asks, shocked at the breathlessness of his own voice.

Lance’s gaze still doesn’t budge.

“I _really_ want to do this.”

Well, holy shit.

_Holy shit_.

After everything, Keith doesn’t even know what to say to that.

He gapes.

Worry gnaws at the edges of Lance’s expression. “Do _you_ really want to do this?”

The answer comes before Keith even registers it, a single word barely above a whisper, but with enough weight to kill any hint of inauthenticity: “ _Yes_.”

He’s buried beneath the weight of a dozen italics. _Hey, Keith. Unforgettable. I gotcha. Please, no. Closer...closer… Whatever they are._ It’s an odd feeling, sifting through the jagged heaviness of them all, desperate to find the thing that’s bound to stop this new development in its tracks, finding nothing.

“Are you distraught right now?”

Keith sucks his lips in between his teeth, just for a second, before letting them loose with a faint _pop_. “Distraught isn’t the word I’d use, no.”

Lance unmistakably leans closer, but it’s subtle enough to be ignored if necessary. “Good. I’m not either. So...did you want to find out what it’s like?”

“Yeah,” Keith says, but he’s not even sure he breathed in first, so it comes out mumbled and a little choked.

And then–

Well.

It’s not their first kiss, but it feels like it.

Lance’s leg shifts a little too far behind him as he leans over; at the first press of their lips, it nudges noisily against the pot beside him. The sound makes him jump just enough to send the thing clattering onto its side, the metal bits and bobs extra noisy against Black’s hull. Cosmo grunts, confused and annoyed at being disturbed, head lifting irritably. The racket has Keith’s lips pulling back a little as he stifles his laughter as best he can, a few amused breaths escaping into Lance’s mouth regardless, and for a second the kiss is lips-against-teeth until he can regain his composure. It’s okay, though; he feels the little huffs of Lance’s snicker in his chest, the curve of his lips more subtle as he brings a hand up to Keith’s jaw to playfully, but determinedly, keep their lips together.

It’s been a while since they’ve done this, and they’ve both grown and changed. It takes a moment to figure each other out again; there’s the fumbling, the hesitance, the tentative exploration. For a split second, Keith worries that their being distraught was the thing that had made it so _good_ before; that it won’t be _real_ , this time, with both of them safe and open.

But then they relax into it,; both of them. And while it still has all the halting symptoms of a first kiss, it’s fucking wonderful.

Keith brings his fingers up to run through Lance’s hair, then lets them press random patterns against the nape of his neck, then idly traces the shape of his ear, marvelling at the softness of the lobe (and delighting in a very obvious shiver that he stores away for future reference). He sighs as Lance brings his own hand down to trace up and down the side of his throat, dipping down to trace his collarbone.

It’s almost strange, there being nothing to worry about; nothing to hurry about. Keith finds himself able to focus on all the spots they’re touching; to sink into a deep awareness of _them_. He’s able to just enjoy the moment as it stretches on and on and on.

When they finally pull away, Lance actually tucks a lock of Keith’s hair behind his ear, and the fact that Keith finds it endearing instead of cheesy probably says more than anything else about how far gone he is on the red paladin.

“Definitely real,” Lance whispers.

Keith just hums in reply. He runs his fingertips over Lance’s jaw, cheekbone, temple, indulging in the way the strawberry flits in and out of view with the movement. There’s so much more to think about—the war, and the other paladins, and how this is going to fit in and amongst all of that—but that seems inconsequential. It seems _easy_ , even, in comparison to everything else that’s led up to this moment: pressing their foreheads together as the desert breeze cools against their skin, the purple sky rapidly turning a dark indigo.

For a second, he considers bringing some of it up; considers saying something like _now what?_ or _we should talk about…_

But then Lance leans forward; pokes his nose against Keith’s in a mindlessly intimate move that leaves the black paladin grinning despite himself.

“Kiss me again, Sharpshooter,” he requests, and Lance complies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so...
> 
> 1) Allura is a bad bitch who don't need no man, and I ain't finna have yet another strong female lead shoehorned into a relationship because god forbid she actually be happy and strong while being independent.  
> 2) How you gon' have a teenager enter a relationship with someone who could be 19 or 219 and not address that shit?  
> 3) The entirety of Lance's show endgame was Allurance, and it's some sheeit. He gives up his beautiful flyboy dreams to put the whole of his being into a relationship with someone who ducked him for years? Like his whole deal is just "I'm all about Allura now"? K cool, VLD; you do you, Imma do me.
> 
> Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
> 
> PS I hope this is closer to the sunset scene we all deserved. Worst tease of the whole series right there.


End file.
